News

The health minister Josef Kubinyi has dismissed the head of the Czech Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine Karel Filip. Minister Kubinyi said he was being dismissed for bad management and warned of possible personnel changes at other managerial posts. The health minister who was appointed to the post recently is expected to draft a viable reform for the ailing health sector. At a Parliament session on Friday Minister Kubinyi verbally attacked the head of the country's largest health insurance company, demanding her resignation, and warned of a series of audits at all top managerial posts. Leading specialists at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine have expressed amazement at the minister's decision to sack the institute's director, calling the move unjustified and saying it would destabilize the institute.

Local authorities are considering sending an inspection to a school where a thirteen year old boy committed suicide this week. The mayor of Hrusovany, near Brno, where the tragedy occurred, said he'd scheduled a meeting of town hall representatives which would debate the matter. The town's inhabitants were devastated by news of the suicide and shocked by rumours that the boy had killed himself because he'd been bullied in school. Neither the police nor the school authorities have confirmed this but the headmistress admitted that bullying was a problem, as in most schools across the country.

The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, who is on a two-day visit to Cyprus, has met the Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos to discuss, among other issues, reunification plans for the divided island. After the meeting, President Klaus said the peoples of Cyprus must resolve the existing situation themselves, adding that a reunification plan cannot be imposed on Cyprus from outside. Cyprus has been divided into a Greek and Turkish part since 1974. The United Nations plan to unite the island failed last week when it was rejected by a majority of Greek Cypriots.

Fifty percent of Czechs admit they have no idea about how European Union bodies function, according to a poll released on Thursday. Only half of those polled said they had even a "vague concept" of the activities of the main European institutions, the survey by the STEM polling agency showed. Six out of 10 people in the Czech Republic said they knew at least "a little" about the functioning of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, while 57 percent said they knew how the European Court works.