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05/28/2010
Best-selling Czech singer-songwriter Jaromír Nohavica will perform at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Friday, as part of the Pulse Festival. The event presents musicians and bands from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other central and Eastern European countries to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. The festival, which started last week and will go on until the end of the month, also features Czech bands Už jsme doma and Psí vojáci.
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05/28/2010
Czech tennis player Klára Zakopalová lost 6-3, 6-3 to 22nd seed Justine Henin of Belgium in the second round of the French Open on Friday. The match was interrupted by dusk and rain on Thursday, with Zakopalová losing 3:2 in the second set. On Friday, the 28-year-old Czech began by losing her serve, and eventually lost the match in one hour and 15 minutes. Zakopalová was the last Czech player left in the ladies’ singles at Rolland Garros.
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05/28/2010
Jamaican sprint star Usain Bolt narrowly failed to set a new 300 metres world record before a sell-out crowd of 22,000 at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting on Thursday night. The holder of the world records at 100 and 200 metres ran the distance in 30.97 seconds. The record set in 2000 by Michael Johnson is 30.85 seconds.
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05/27/2010
Czech political parties are making a last bid to win over wavering voters before polling starts to the lower house on Friday. Leaders of the two biggest political parties will take part in a final television clash. Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek and Civic Democrat leader Petr Nečas face each other for a 90-minute duel on Czech public television on Thursday evening. The debate will be split into three sections: the economy, foreign policy and corruption. A debate on Czech Radio on Wednesday featured personal attacks by the two leaders on each other.
The Civic Democrats held their closing campaign rally in Prague on Thursday afternoon. Their leader ruled out any future deal with the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats have a final evening rally in Brno. Most pre-election polls have put the Social Democrats in the lead but falling short of a majority in the 200-seat lower house.
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05/27/2010
Prime Minister Jan Fischer gave an upbeat evaluation of his year heading the government before the final session of the lower house on Thursday. The caretaker prime minister said it had overall been successful: rounding off the Czech EU presidency, ratifying the EU’s Lisbon treaty, passing a budget, and preparing the ground for better use of EU funds. He added that he was not handing on the government in a worse state than he had found it. Prime Minister Fischer called on his successor to pass a new civil service law, saying that it was a prerequisite for further unavoidable reforms
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05/27/2010
Members of the lower house have voted in favour of special government bonds totalling up to 3.0 billion crowns to help repair the damage from recent floods in Moravia. The vote on the flood bonds was subject to a special fast track procedure with the upper house, the Senate, due to discuss the issue next week. The bonds should be bought by the European Investment Bank which gives the Czech government better terms than offering them on the open market. The total bill for flood damages is estimated at up to 5.0 billion crowns by the Association of Czech Regions.
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05/27/2010
Czech President Václav Klaus has intervened in a citizenship row between Slovakia and Hungary. In a meeting with the Slovak ambassador on Wednesday, President Klaus pledged support for Slovakia in the dispute and denounced Hungarian government actions as irresponsible. Fresh conflict between Slovakia and Hungary has stemmed from a Hungarian parliament decision to grant dual citizenship to Hungarians living in neighboring countries. In reaction, the Slovak parliament passed a law stating that all Slovak citizens applying for Hungarian dual citizenship will lose their Slovak citizenship.
About a half million Hungarians live in Slovakia. Relations between the two countries are historically tense due to unresolved questions surrounding the rights of the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia. Recent elections in Hungary producing a right-wing coalition have aggravated the situation even further.
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05/27/2010
The spa town of Františkovy Lazně has launched criminal proceedings against the head of the board and general director of betting giant Sazka. The town mayor said Aleš Hušák had made threats against him and town officials after a council decision to ban traditional gaming machines and automatic video terminals. The latter are operated by Sazka. The mayor said threats included heavy financial penalties and the loss of personal property. The council ban came before a decision by the upper house, the Senate, last week to widen local council powers to ban gaming machines, including the video terminals.
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05/27/2010
Managers of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes called police out to their main Prague office to search for bugging devices, the weekly Tyden reported on its web pages on Thursday. Police failed to find anything suspicious. It is the second time that the police search has been demanded, the first request coming in April after the surprise appointment of historian Jiří Pernes as new director. He was dismissed after just six weeks in the post last week. The troubled institute holds the archives of the Communist secret police who were well practiced in the arts of espionage. A spokesman for the institute said it had no comment to make.
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05/27/2010
Several hundred farmers demonstrated in front of the lower house of parliament on Thursday for greater use of biofuels in petrol and diesel. A law boosting biofuels’ share in both was vetoed two weeks ago by President Václav Klaus. In the aftermath, farmers complained they would suffer heavy losses and would not be able to grow rape and other biofuel crops on around 70,000 hectares earmarked for them. Deputies in the lower house voted to overturn the presidential veto on Thursday. That means the proportion of biofuel in petrol will rise in June from 3.5 percent to 4.1 percent and in diesel from 4.5 percent to 6.0 percent.
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