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03/10/2010
The Interior Ministry has received 21 complaints so far this year from Czech drivers who said they had been harassed by the police in other states during border controls. Most of the cases involved police in the German state of Bavaria and in Austria. The Czech minister of the interior, Martin Pecina, is planning to hold talks on the matter with his German and Austrian counterparts. Some Czech drivers say they have been subject to excessive controls by border police in neighbouring states since border posts were closed with the Czech Republic’s accession to the Schengen zone at the end of 2007. The number of checks reportedly increased at the start of this year after a change in Czech law which sets the amount of various drugs people can possess without facing criminal prosecution.
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03/10/2010
Critics of the Social Democrats have hit back at the party’s leader Jiří Paroubek after he said functionaries would take photographs of opponents at election meetings to see whether the same faces appeared at rallies in different parts of the country. The Social Democrats say if they do spot the same faces in various places that will be evidence of planned opposition and they will post the photographs on the internet, a practice they say is already employed by rivals the Civic Democrats. Many young people have reportedly reacted by posting pictures of themselves with their middle fingers raised on an anti-Paroubek page on the social networking website Facebook. Last year Social Democrat representatives were pelted with eggs on the hustings on several occasions.
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03/10/2010
Officials in Prague are considering transferring control of a controversial city card system to a newly established company, the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes reported. The Opencard, which can be used as a travel pass and for some other services, has proven controversial, with accusations that it cost the capital far more than it should have done. Mladá fronta Dnes said the Town Hall may hand the running of the Opencard system to an especially created firm under Prague’s transport authority. On Tuesday police removed documents from offices at Prague Town Hall, two months after an opposition councillor filed corruption charges in connection with the system. Three audits have been carried out, uncovering numerous shortcomings. The Opencard project cost the city CZK 800 million (over USD 42 million) but has not made any profit.
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03/10/2010
The annual One World festival of human rights documentaries gets underway in Prague on Wednesday night. Described by organisers as the biggest event of its kind in Europe, it will this year feature over 100 films from 30 states around the world. The opening film Green Days focuses on the aftermath of last year’s disputed presidential election in Iran, and the Czech NGO which runs the festival, People in Need, will present a human rights award to two Iranians serving prison terms for opposition activities. After eight days of screenings in the capital, the One World festival will move on to 29 other Czech cities and towns.
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03/10/2010
A gala evening in honour of the world renowned Czech ballet dancer Daria Klimentová is being held at the National Theatre in Prague on Wednesday night. Klimentová, who has been prima ballerina at the English National Ballet in London for 13 years, will perform in public for the 1000th time at the tribute event. There will be a repeat performance at the National Theatre on Thursday.
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03/10/2010
The Swiss rock band Young Gods performed acoustic versions of songs from throughout their 20-year-plus career in a show at Prague’s Archa theatre on Tuesday night. The group, who are regarded as pioneers of industrial and electronic music, brought the same show to the city’s Akropolis for two nights last year.
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03/10/2010
Vladimír Růžička has said he will quit as coach of the Czech ice hockey team after the World Championships in Germany in May. His announcement came after the Czech Republic were knocked out of the Winter Olympics at the quarter-finals. Růžička, whose contract expires at the end of the season, said after two years at the helm it was time to let somebody else take over. The former star player is also manager of the club Slavia Prague.
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03/09/2010
On Tuesday, the lower house of the Czech parliament overturned a veto by the Senate regarding an amendment to the act on value added tax that would cancel higher taxation of employee benefits. The final decision is now up to President Václav Klaus, who already stated that he would not sign the amendment. Should the change in law go through, it would raise the state budget deficit by over 700 million Czech crowns. Last week, transport union leaders threatened to go on a nation-wide strike should the higher taxation of employee benefits not be cancelled. After Prime Minister pushed through a decision in the unions’ favor, the Senate vetoed this decision.
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03/09/2010
On Tuesday, the umbrella organization of transport unions apologized to Gustav Slámečka, the Minister of Transport, for homophobic remarks made by one of its leaders, Jaromir Dušek. In an open letter to the minister the union said that Mr. Dušek’s homophobic remarks damaged the image of all members of the union and were offensive to all decent people. It added that it hoped the incident would not damage relations between the transport union and the ministry in the long run. On Monday, trade unions publicly distanced themselves from Dušek’s homophobic statements. Dušek said in an interview for Saturday’s Lidové Noviny that the transport sector was run by a clique of homosexuals who had people both in the cabinet and the office of the government.
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03/09/2010
A regional court on Tuesday denied an appeal by Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, a communist-era prosecutor who is serving a six year jail sentence for judicial murder, to be freed on the grounds of three amnesties that apply to her case. Mrs. Brožová-Polednová can appeal the regional court’s decision at the Supreme Court in Prague, but will have to remain in prison until the Supreme Court delivers a final ruling. Her lawyer filed a request for her prison sentence to be cancelled last week and says he has not yet been officially informed about the negative decision.
Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, aged 88, is the first participant in the communist era show trials that took place in the 1950s to be persecuted.
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