• 05/01/2010

    Around 100 members of the far-right Workers’ Party of Social Justice, which evolved from the banned Workers’ Party, gathered at Prague’s náměstí Jiřího z Poděbrad square on Saturday. They dispersed after half an hour after organisers abandoned the idea of going on a march. Meanwhile, an estimated 200 anarchists congregated in the downtown area before moving on to one of the islands on the River Vltava. Police said they had withdrawn extra officers that had been drafted in when the gatherings, which they had assessed as potential flashpoints, passed off peacefully.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    Around 35,000 people visited the Czech Republic’s pavilion at the Expo 2010 fair in Shanghai on Saturday, the first day it has been officially open. The man in charge of the Czech pavilion, Pavel Antonín Stehlík, said attendance had exceeded all expectations. More than 7,000 visitors entered in the first hour alone and Mr Stehlík said it was so crowded that organisers had to slow admissions for a period.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    The United States has removed the Czech Republic from a watch list of countries it monitors over the theft of intellectual property. The change comes following the implementation of a new Czech criminal code at the start of this year; it imposed greater sanctions for the breaking of copyright law and led to an increase in checks on goods sold at markets in the country’s border areas. The Czech Republic had been on the US watch list for eight years.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    The European Union’s commissioner for enlargement, Štefan Füle, says Croatia has closed only around half of the chapters it needs to qualify for membership. Speaking to the Czech News Agency, the Czech politician said for that reason the European Commission was wary of estimating when the Croats could join the bloc. Mr Füle said it bore in mind Zagreb’s stated intention of completing membership talks by the end of this year, adding that how much would be achieved depended on the applicant.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    Several thousand people attended the funeral on Friday of Cardinal Tomáš Špidlík in the Moravian town of Velehrad, which is a popular pilgrimage destination for Czech Roman Catholics. Cardinal Špidlík, a Jesuit cleric and theologian, died at the age of 90 on April 16 in Rome, where he had spent several decades. Friday’s mass was served by the archbishop of Olomouc, Jan Graubner. Pope Benedict XVI took part in an earlier ceremony in memory of the cardinal in the Vatican. His remains will be interred in a tomb in Velehrad basilica at a future date.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    Lucie Šafářová has been beaten in the quarter-finals of tennis’s Stuttgart Grand Prix after losing 6-7 6-1 1-6 to Russia’s unseeded Anna Lapushchenkova. Her exit on Friday came just a day after the Czech had knocked out world number two Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark. Iveta Benešová, meanwhile, reached the final of the Fes Grand Prix in Morocco, after beating Alize Cornet of France 6-3 4-6 7-5 in the semi-finals.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    The list of Czech players who will not be available for ice hockey’s World Championship in Germany next month is getting longer. Martin Erat of Nashville, Washington’s Tomáš Fleischmann and Martin Hanzal of Phoenix all have injury problems, while coach Vladimír Ružička also expects Phoenix’s Radim Vrbata will miss the tournament. Several other players, including Patrik Eliáš – who captained the team at the Winter Olympics – were already ruled out. On Saturday, the Czech Republic were beaten 4:1 by Finland at the Swedish Games in Stockholm, meaning they can not now win this year’s four-nation Euro Hockey Tour.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/01/2010

    Over 700 couples set a new Czech record on Saturday for the number of people kissing in the same place at the same time. The record was set on Prague’s Petřín hill, where many couples visit on May 1 to kiss at a statue of the Czech romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha, author of the epic poem Maj. The previous Czech kissing couples record of 390 was set in the town of Šumperk in 2006. Czech tradition has it that women must be kissed under a tree on May Day; otherwise they will “dry up”.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 04/30/2010

    Miloslav Vlček of the Social Democrats has resigned as chairman of the lower house of Parliament and given up his deputy’s post over his involvement in controversial subsidies and loans. He will not run in May’s general elections and plans to leave politics altogether. Mr. Vlček came under intense pressure to resign from his posts after it emerged that he had persuaded deputies to approve a controversial subsidy for a close friend and had breached the law by repaying a one million crown loan to a friend in cash, a practice outlawed in order to prevent money-laundering.

    Deputy chair of the lower house Miroslava Němcová of the Civic Democrats is expected to replace Miloslav Vlček as the head of the lower house.

  • 04/30/2010

    A convoy of American war jeeps drove through Prague on Friday at the start of celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII and the liberation of western Bohemia from the Nazis by the US 3rd army. The largest Czech city General Patton’s men freed in 1945 was Plzen - about 80 kilometres south-west of Prague – where the biggest celebrations with US war veterans are due to take place over the weekend. During the communist years the authorities only credited the Russian army with the country’s liberation from Nazi rule, downplaying the US role in the process.

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