News

The Neo-Nazi organisation National Resistance has published a list of its biggest enemies, the country's main commercial station TV Nova reported on Monday. Some fifty personalities, including members of the Roma community, the Communist Party, as well as anarchists, have been black listed on the organisation's web site. Some of the people on the list have said they feared for their safety as they know of cases where members of the National Resistance have brutally attacked people they did not like. According to TV Nova, the Czech police have been monitoring extreme-right internet sites for some time now.

A record 190 delegates attended the 13th annual Czech-German conference of politicians, journalists and scientists, which came to an end in the town of Jihlava on Sunday. The three-day event, organised by the Bernard Bolzano Foundation, aims at promoting discussion and finding solutions to various problem areas causing friction in Czech-German relations. Conference participants shared the view that, concerning the period following WWII, Czechs and Germans will most likely never come to an agreement. However, according to Czech historian Jan Kren, besides agreeing to disagree, both sides need to acknowledge each other and be prepared to listen to the other's arguments.

A Czech Airlines (CSA) flight carrying 116 passengers from Prague to Amsterdam was forced to turn back on Sunday after experiencing technical difficulties. A spokesperson for the national carrier said the plane, a Boeing 737-400, suffered problems with its engine, forcing it to return to Prague's Ruzyne airport shortly after take-off. CSA management says the passengers on the flight were never in any danger and has attributed the growing number of technical problems experienced in the past few months to the significantly larger number of flights offered this year.

Health ministers from fifteen current and future European Union member states have agreed to join forces to discourage patients from one country from seeking health care in another after the EU expands in May. The ministers agreed to regularly exchange information on patients who seek cross-border medical care at the end of a two-day conference in Senohraby, 30 kilometers south of Prague. Studies have indicated that patients from Western European countries could be tempted by cheaper health care costs in the ten nations joining the EU. The "Prague Declaration", a document calling for measures to be taken if the health care system of any one country was threatened, was signed by the health ministers of the ten new EU nations (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) as well as the five current members (Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands).