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06/20/2014
A court in Brno has handed down a six-year prison sentence to the owner of a solar power plant who fraudulently got it registered for high renewable power payments. The owner got technicians to falsely say that the plant was completed before 2010 so that it could benefit from high state subsidies. At the time the solar panels and other equipment was not installed and the plant was not actually up and running until February 2011. One of the technicians was sentenced to five years. The court also demanded 12 million crowns to be reclaimed from the owner. A raft of similar cases are expected to come before Czech courts.
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06/20/2014
A Social Democrat member of the lower house of Parliament caused an uproar in the chamber on Friday when he accused the Catholic Church of being one of the biggest partners of the Nazi regime in Germany. Igor Jakubčík added that the church has also agreed to the expulsion and murder of Jews during the Second World War and helped Nazis at the end of the war to escape to South America. He was speaking during the debate on an amendment to current restitution rules which would give more time to examine church demands for property confiscated during the Communist era. Jakubčík's remarks were attacked by members of the Christian Democrat party and the right-of-Centre Civic Democrats. He latter said that he had nothing against the current church and regretted what had happened after the Communist takeover in 1948.
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06/20/2014
A unique modern building belonging to the Czech Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (made famous by the late scientist and researcher Antonin Holý) officially opened in Prague on Thursday. The new site, nickenamed "the cauliflower" by its employees, cost more than one billion crowns to complete - without state subsidies but from profits from Professor Holy´s patents for medicinal formulas that have been used worldwide in medicines against AIDS, smallpox, shingles and Hepatitis B. The innovative building was designed by architects Ivan Šrom and Kateřina Mašková, from the VPU Deco Praha studio.
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06/20/2014
Two people had to be treated in Prague hospitals for suspected spinal injuries following a helicopter crash-landing on Friday morning. The two-person aircraft came down shortly before 9 AM in a field near the R-10 highway outside the capital. There was no fire, nor any evidence of a gas leak; the two aboard had to be freed by a rescue crew. According to information available, the small helicopter was owned by a private company and had been headed to an airshow in Hradec Králové.
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06/20/2014
A leading Czech scientist has created uproar with an article in a journal suggesting that pregnant mothers who expected their babies would have severe disabilities should undergo abortions. Miroslav Mitlöhner has in the aftermath of the article resigned as director of a university institution and member of an advisory council at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Mitlöhner in an interview said afterwards that some of the comments attributed to him were quotations from other authors but stood by the overall contents of his article.
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06/20/2014
Results from school leaving exams are the worst this year since the new system was introduced in 2011. The overall failure rate climbed to 18.7 percent of those taking the exams for the first time. That compares with the 16.2 percent failure rate from 2013 according to centre which prepares the exams. The worst results were for mathematics, with around a quarter of pupils failing, and German, where around one in five failed to reach the required level. Around 10 percent of pupils failed to pass in English.
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06/19/2014
Czech foreign minister Lubomír Zaorálek on Thursday opened an honorary consulate in the east Ukraine city of Dnepropetrovsk. The move was forced by the closure of the consulate around 200 kilometres to the east in Donetsk because of fighting between government and separatist forces. Minister Zaorálek said the opening was a signal that the Czech government was not quitting the region and that business could return and invest. He said Dnepropetrovsk with its one million inhabitants is the third biggest city in Ukraine and perhaps an even more important industrial centre than Donetsk.
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06/19/2014
In tennis, Petra Kvitová has been forced to withdraw from her quarter final match against British opponent Heather Watson at Eastbourne. The Czech number one women player cited muscle problems. The Eastbourne tournament is a tradition warm up for Wimbledon, which starts next Monday. Former Wimbledon winner Kvitová’s injury will raise doubts whether she will be able to compete in the Grand Slam event.
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06/19/2014
In related news, defense minister Stropnický says that a special anti-corruption team will be created which will be directly answerable to him. The minister said the three-member team was being created because of the many dubious contracts signed in recent years. He added that a series of significant tenders, such as for information technology will probably be staged again because of suspicions about them. The new team should be up and running from the start of July.
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06/19/2014
The Czech army is prepared to offer its forces for NATO missions in Afghanistan and Mali and in the Sinai peninsula next year and in 2016, according to the Ministry of Defense. Czech aircraft will also be offered to protect NATO airspace in 2016, probably in the Baltic States and over Iceland. A final proposal on the foreign missions should be prepared with in the next couple of weeks in order for the lower house of parliament to vote on it. The current Czech presence in Afghanistan totals 300 with the likelihood that it could be cut slightly but not increased, according to Minister of Defence Martin Stropnický. Thirty-eight Czechs are serving in Mali and 14 on the international observer mission in the Sinai.
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