News

Police in Tišnov near Brno, in Moravia, have caught a group of six boys responsible for an estimated 50,000 crowns worth of damages caused by spray painting over the last three months. The group painted graffiti at more than 50 sites. Police spokesman Bohumil Malášek told the ČTK news agency that rounding up the six was a success on the part of police, who are only ever rarely able to apprehend vandals. The Brno area has seen a noted rise in vandalism - a development noted by local town halls. Sites hit by the group included garages, elementary schools, bus stops and even a local observatory.

Several centimetres of snow fell in most parts of the Czech Republic on Wednesday night as well as part of Thursday, causing complications on the country’s roads. Due to strong winds snowdrifts formed at several places. However, temperatures rose considerably, after record lows of around -25 degrees Celsius. Much of the Czech Republic has been under a blanket of snow for almost two weeks now, with the capital Prague seeing its highest snowfalls in three decades.

A 16-year-old pitching prodigy from the Czech Republic, Štepán Havlíček, has signed a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Rays, the US Major League Baseball club announced on Wednesday. Havlíček pitched for the Czech junior national team and struck out 13 batters in 11 1/3 scoreless innings during the European Junior Championships last August in Germany. According to sources, the Rays said Havlíček will likely attend some portion of spring training, which begins in late February, and play in Major League Baseball's Australia Academy later this year. The training will help determine at what level of the minor-league developmental system Havlíček might start in his pursuit of one day reach the roster of the Rays, who lost to Philadelphia in the 2008 World Series.

Thirty percent fewer Czechs took sick leave from work in 2009 than in the previous year, according to figures from the country’s social welfare authority quoted by Lidové noviny. Figures for last year were as much as 40 percent lower than in 2007, the newspaper said. The fall is evidently due to a change in the benefits system under which no money is paid during the first three days of an illness. The man behind that change, former social affairs minister Petr Necaš, said absenteeism in the Czech Republic had simply fallen to normal levels for European Union states.