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European regions should avoid resorting to protectionism in light of the current financial downturn, head of the Committee of the Regions Luc van den Brande said at the start of a two-day summit of EU regions being held in Prague. The summit is the single largest event organised within the Czech Republic’s EU presidency, and has brought hundreds of European regional representatives to the Czech capital. Speaking on Thursday, Mr van den Brande urged regional councils around the continent to cooperate, not compete, with each other in times of financial crisis. On the first day of the summit, participants agreed that drawing from EU structural funds more quickly and more effectively would prove a partial solution to the crisis.

A Třebíč hospital in which two newborn babies were accidentally swapped is appealing the amount of damages it had to pay the families involved. A Brno court ruled in January that Libor Broža and his partner Jaroslava Trojanová should receive 1.2 million crowns (54,500 USD) from the hospital, while Jaroslava and Jan Čermák should receive 2.1 million crowns (95,200 USD) in damages. The sum was less than the families had requested, but following the verdict, both sets of partners said they would not pursue the case any further, as they now wanted to get on with their lives. The families involved say they are surprised by the hospital’s decision to appeal.

Over a year ago it was discovered that two baby girls had been mixed up at birth and had been living with the wrong families for over nine months. The girls were swapped back shortly before their first birthdays.

The newspaper Právo has demanded an apology from the head of the opposition Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, who, it says raised false alarm about the state of the daily’s finances. The firm which owns Právo - Borgis - said that comments Mr Paroubek made about the poor financial state of the paper in an open letter to its editor-in-chief were untruthful and damaged the newspaper’s reputation. Právo responded to Mr Paroubek’s claims by saying that 2008 had been the best year, in financial terms, in the newspaper’s history. The demand for an apology follows claims made by Právo’s editor-in-chief, Zdeněk Porybný, on Wednesday that he was being pressurised by Mr Paroubek to portray the Social Democrats in a favourable light. The left-leaning Právo grew out of the former communist newspaper Rudé Právo.

Prague’s flood defence system was brought into operation on Thursday, amidst warnings of rising water levels across the country’s rivers. Flood gates on the outskirts of the capital were closed, blocking river traffic from entering into the metropolis. As snow melts in Moravia and eastern Bohemia, and with 15 mm of rain forecast for Friday, meteorologists warned of the possibility of floods in the capital going into the weekend. River traffic within the capital itself has not been disrupted, but many boats moored along the Vltava have been ordered to go to the harbour in Holešovice. Local authorities have said that they are taking precautions and that the situation as yet does not look too dangerous.