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12/16/2009
The Supreme Court has rejected the appeals of four people involved in the so-called “Kuřim case” in which two young boys were severely abused. In late 2008, six individuals, including the boys’ mother and aunt, were found guilty of imprisoning, burning, suffocating and cutting the children as part of the dogma of a small religious sect. The aunt and three others were appealing the length of their sentences, which range from five to ten years, however the court found that their appeals were unsubstantiated.
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12/16/2009
Young men in the Czech Republic are drinking less beer than in the past, according to the polling agency CVVM. According to a survey conducted by the agency regularly since 2004, 92% of men aged 18 to 30 drank beer in the first year, while 84% say they do today. Nine out of ten Czech men in general and slightly more than half of women say they drink beer occasionally. The amount of beer consumption in the country has declined in recent years; nonetheless, Czechs remain the top beer drinkers in the world, with 154 litres consumed per person per year.
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12/16/2009
Police in the South Moravia are searching for three men who attacked three Vietnamese shop keepers in the town of Kyjov, leaving one of them in critical condition. The masked assailants did not steal anything from the shop, but beat one of the victims unconscious and stabbed another in the stomach before leaving. Police spokeswoman Soňa Svobodová said that the senselessness of the attack was evidence of the fact that while crime in general is dropping, their aggressiveness of the perpetrators is on the rise.
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12/15/2009
The caretaker Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, says the country’s biggest right-wing party the Civic Democrats will continue to back his cabinet – if it attempts to curb the swelling public finance deficit. Mr Fischer made the comments after talks with Civic Democrats leader Mirek Topolánek in Prague on Tuesday morning. The meeting followed a lower house session last week in which next year’s budget was approved, with a record deficit, only after the Social Democrats forced through increased funding for social services, civil servants’ salaries and payments to farmers. On Monday the government said it would do all in its power to keep the budget deficit at or below 5.3 percent of GDP.
Mr Topolánek said the interim government – which was selected by his party and the Social Democrats – must oppose any left-wing proposals that would deepen the deficit. He indicated that ministers who back such proposals should quit the cabinet.
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12/15/2009
A threatened general strike has been averted at a Hyundai car plant in north Moravia after a deal was reached between management and union leaders on Tuesday. The agreement came after the company dropped a plan to cancel overtime work. Around 400 employees briefly went on an unofficial strike at the Hyundai plant earlier this month. The company employs around 4,000 people at its factory in Nošovice, which began operations just over a year ago.
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12/15/2009
Thousands of people will be able to petition to be released from prison when a new criminal code comes into effect on January 1, Lidové noviny reported on Tuesday, describing the situation as an unofficial amnesty. Changes to the law redefining some crimes as mere misdemeanours will also mean that tens of thousands of prisoners could see their terms reduced, the newspaper said. The head of the country’s judges’ organisation, Tomáš Lichovník, said those who had been sent to jail for something which is no longer a crime would have to be freed. He said the courts expected to be extremely busy.
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12/15/2009
President Václav Klaus says Czech scientists will have to get used to the fact they will have lower funding. Speaking at a meeting at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague on Tuesday, Mr Klaus said scientists would have to bear in mind the country’s economic situation. Before the president spoke, the chairman of the Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš, launched an attack on the government council for research, development and innovation over a change in its policy on science funding – it has placed an emphasis on backing applied rather than basic research.
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12/15/2009
Meanwhile, the minister of education, Miroslava Kopicová, said maintaining science funding at its current level was not realistic. Speaking at the same conference, Minister Kopicová also said it was not possible to rely on substantial support in the coming years from the European Union for research and development in the Czech Republic.
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12/15/2009
The leader of the Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, lost a complaint against the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes over its suggestions that he ordered the arrest of fugitive businessman Tomáš Pitr while he was prime minister. Mr Paroubek had been demanding the right to reply with an article in the paper giving his side of the story. The Social Democrats head also came out on the losing side in a different case heard by a Prague court on Tuesday, after demanding an apology and compensation over the leaking of a police report on organised crime linking his party to the underworld ahead of the last general elections. The Prague High Court rejected an appeal against a ruling against Jiří Paroubek handed down in June. On Monday, the politician’s wife lost a libel case she took against a magazine over what she alleged were pornographic drawings of the couple.
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12/15/2009
Most Czech children would like laptop computers for Christmas, the news website novinky.cz reported, quoting staff at a post office where Christmas wishes are traditionally sent. Since the start of December about a quarter of a tonne of letters outlining what children would like from the “Baby Jesus” have arrived at the post office in Boží Dar, a mountain resort in west Bohemia. As well as notebooks and other electronics, girls are asking for dolls while boys would like building toys, a post office official told novinky.cz.
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