News

The board of directors of the state-owned Czech Railways approved on Wednesday a plan to emit 300 million euro in international bonds, the Czech news agency ČTK reported on Tuesday. The company plans to use to funds to renovate its ageing fleet. Czech Railways CEO Petr Žaluda said the company must first receive international ratings, which should be ready later this year.

A bi-lateral work group, which was implemented in April to accelerate the ratification of a treaty defining the framework of relations between the Czech state and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches, will meet for the first time on Tuesday. Its first session is to be attended by government representatives only, the Czech deputy minister of foreign affairs, Hynek Kmoníček, said on Monday. The goal is to evaluate and possibly rewrite parts of the treaty, which will then have to be recommended for approval by an expert committee of state and church representatives.The document, which does not cover the restitution of church property seized during the communist era, was agreed in 1999, though Czech MPs refused to ratify it four years later.

The Czech prime minister and head of the current caretaker cabinet, Jan Fischer, said on Monday that a new director of the Czech Statistical Office would be named by the end of the week. He added that he had discussed the issue with President Václav Klaus and that it was on the best way of being resolved. Mr Fischer was the office’s director for six years until he was appointed to the post of prime minister last year. He had been planning to replace the acting director Jiří Křovák once a new government was formed. In May, he decided against a return to the Czech Statistical Office after being offered a post as vice president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Next Sunday, Prague’s Žižkov Theatre of Jára Cimrman will be holding a public memorial event for its late director, the actor and screenwriter Ladislav Smoljak who died on Sunday at the age of 78 following a long bout of illness. Visitors will be able to pay their last respects to the renowned director early on Sunday. In the afternoon, a funeral service to be attended by close friends and relatives only will be held. A spokesman for the theater said on Monday that some upcoming performances will have to be cancelled, but that the ensemble is committed to keep putting on as many plays as possible despite the death of one of its founders. Mr Smoljak was a household name in the Czech Republic for film roles in the 1970s and ‘80s and well as for his creative collaboration with writer/director Zdeněk Svěrák.