News

An autopsy has confirmed that a 23-year-old member of the president's elite Castle Guard unit, who was found with multiple gunshot wounds on Saturday, committed suicide. Police say the man killed himself by shooting himself in the head with a sub-machine gun. The suicide was the latest in a series of unfortunate incidents for the Castle Guard. An army psychologist attached to the unit was dismissed after he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting soldiers. Recently it was revealed that Castle Guard members had posed in their uniforms for a gay pornographic website. President Vaclav Klaus has called for urgent transformation of the unit, to restore the Castle Guard's reputation as quickly as possible.

President Vaclav Klaus has been released from hospital, and is back on holiday with his wife Livia at the presidential chateau in Lany, outside Prague. Mr Klaus was admitted to Prague's General Teaching Hospital on Thursday evening after apparently overexerting himself in the hot weather. He was released on Friday after undergoing tests. The 62-year-old president checked himself into hospital after falling ill following a game of tennis. Mr Klaus had spent last week at a spa in Karlovy Vary, where he was recovering from a recent bout of tonsillitis. A spokesman for the president said tests had shown Mr Klaus was completely healthy.

Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla has called for open dialogue to relieve mounting tension with labour unions over his government's proposed fiscal reforms. The reform package - which is now being considered by parliament - includes layoffs and pension cuts in the public sector that are opposed by the country's largest union umbrella group, the Czech-Moravian Federation of Trade Unions. Mr Spidla said in a newspaper interview the only way to resolve the conflict was to engage in constant dialogue. Prague could see demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of public sector workers in September, as parliament prepares to vote on the package.

Franz Ulrich Kinsky, a descendant of the Kinsky noble family, has said he will demand that the Czech state return hundreds of antiques and other historical artefacts which he said were wrongfully seized from him after the Second World War. Mr Kinsky's lawyer said the artefacts - including paintings, engravings and a large library of antique books - had been taken from property which was confiscated by the state. Mr Kinsky has filed a total of 157 lawsuits, asking the courts to declare him the legal owner of property including country homes and woodland. Most of the property was confiscated after 1945 from Mr Kinsky's father, an alleged Nazi sympathiser who died before the war. However Mr Kinsky says the property belonged to him, not his father, and the confiscation was therefore illegal. He has so far won five cases in court.