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Leaked data from the International Association of Athletics Federations revealed at the weekend suggesting a high level of drug-taking in the sport also concerns Czech athletes, the website of the UK’s Daily Mail reported. Seven percent of Czechs tested between 2001 and 2012 had suspicious blood samples, it said. Responding to the claim, the head of the Czech Olympic Committee’s anti-doping section, Jan Chlumský, said it was not possible to say at the present time in what way the results had been abnormal. The chairman of the Czech Olympic Committee, Jiří Kejval, criticised the publication of the records; he said media reports on the subject had been sensationalist and that drawing conclusions on the basis of partial results was highly unsound.

The Czech government is preparing the sell off of dozens of excess buildings held by various institutions and authorities. Around 20 state institutions have been told to submit their lists of non-required property by September. Around 600 properties are believed to fall into the category with earnings from their sale estimated at around 2 billion crowns. One of the first properties likely to be sold is a former seminary at Vidnava near the Polish border. It was initially earmarked for use by the prisons service but development plans were eventually shelved.

Deputy chairwoman of the upper house of parliament, the Senate, Miluše Horská, has said she is optimistic that funds will be found to buy up and close a pig farm at the site of camp where Roma were interned and died from 1942. The comments came during an annual commemorative event near the site of the Lety camp where hundreds of Roma perished due to disease and ill treatment. The closure of the pig farm has been a subject of debate for years. Last year Minister of Culture Daniel Herman promised that the question would be resolved. The director of the Lidice memorial, who also has responsible for the Lety memorial, pointed out Monday that the issue is not just a question of money to buy out the farm, estimated at sever hundred million crowns, but also the demand of the owner for a new site and suitable for the farm to be found nearby.

The German Association for Exilees the (BdV) on Monday welcomed Czech and other commemorations in Central Europe of the expulsion of German communities at the end of WWII and recognition of the fact that this was often accompanies by violence. The association made the statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Potsdam Conference at the end of WWII. The association recalled that the Allied powers agreed at the Potsdam Conference in late July and August 1945 to the expulsion of German populations from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland but stressed that it should be done in an orderly and humane fashion. The conference did not legitimize the violence that had started even before the conference began, the association said in a press statement. The statement specifically mentioned massacres of Germans at Ústí nad Labem, the death march from Brno to the Austrian border, and attacks on Germans at Žatec and Lanškroun. A commemorative service was held at Ústí on Friday. Earlier this year the city council at Brno apologised for the death march and expulsion of former German citizens.