News

President Vaclav Klaus has signed a number of new laws, including the much debated civil service law. The legislation defines the rights and responsibilities of roughly 80,000 state employees, who will have to swear an oath of loyalty to the state and will have to forego other sources of income. On the other hand civil servants will have the right to five weeks of paid holidays and will receive five months' severance pay.

Police say a married couple from the town of Kutna Hora have confessed to murdering eight people, in what appears to be the worst case of serial murder in Czech criminal history. Thirty-seven-year-old Jaroslav Stodola and his 34-year-old wife Dana have confessed to murdering and robbing eight elderly people, mostly women. The murders were committed over a period of several years. In some cases the couple made the deaths appear as an accident or suicide. The couple were caught after their ninth intended victim survived. They face the possibility of life imprisonment if found guilty.

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.