• Liška elected chairman of Green Party at conference in Brno
    12/05/2009

    Ondřej Liška has been elected chairman of the Green Party. Mr Liška, who had been acting chair since the resignation earlier this year of Martin Bursík, received the votes of around two thirds of delegates at a party congress in the Moravian city of Brno. The Greens’ new leader said he had been given a strong mandate. Mr Liška said the party, which has been riven by internal divisions, now had to work together. He said he would offer both his left and right hands to the supporters of the two candidates he defeated in Saturday’s vote. Ondřej Liška, who is 32, was education minister from December 2007 to May of this year.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Police arrest man over racist publication
    12/05/2009

    Police in České Budějovice have filed charges against a man responsible for a publication entitled The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question, the website tyden.cz reported. The “solution” posited by Jiří Gaudin and its other anonymous authors is sending Romanies “back” to India. Around 20 members of the far-right National Party held a launch for the publication in April this year at the site of a World War II concentration camp for Romanies in Lety, south Bohemia.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Girl dies after soccer goal construction falls on her
    12/05/2009

    A girl of six has died in hospital in Brno, after sustaining serious injuries when the metal construction of a soccer goal fell on her at her school in Dolní Cerekev. The girl died in the early hours of Saturday morning, two days after the incident occurred. Police have begun a criminal investigation into the matter.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Skiing events cancelled due to lack of snow
    12/05/2009

    World Cup ski jumping and Nordic combined events scheduled to take place in the Czech Republic next weekend have been cancelled due to a lack of snow. Organisers in the north Bohemian resort of Harrachov said relatively high temperatures made it impossible to prepare the HS 142 hill and cross-country track with artificial snow. A decision on whether to go ahead with the events was delayed for as long as possible, but in the end unfavourable forecasts led organisers to cancel them.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Hundreds attend Havels’ Mikuláš bazaar
    12/05/2009

    Hundreds of people attended a Mikuláš (St Nicholas) bazaar held by the Vision 97 foundation of former president Václav Havel and his wife Dagmar in Prague at their deconsecrated St Anne’s Church on Saturday. The couple held the charity bazaar for the sixth time this year. Czechs mark Mikuláš on the evening of December 5, though the actual saint’s day falls one day later.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Temperatures in November considerably higher than average for month
    12/05/2009

    Temperatures last month were considerably warmer than the average for November, the Czech Hydro-Meteorological Institute said on its website. This November saw average nationwide daily temperatures of 5.7 degrees Celsius, 2.8 degrees higher than the monthly average. A spokesperson for the institute said temperatures last month were strongly above average. Meanwhile, precipitation in the Czech Republic last month was slightly below average.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Six in every thousand .cz websites infected with malware, spam
    12/05/2009

    Six in every thousand websites with the Czech domain .cz are infected with malware and spam, according to a survey by the antivirus firm McAfee released on Friday. It is estimated that there are around 500,000 websites with the .cz domain.
    Author: Ian Willoughby

  • Press: Presidents Obama, Medvedev likely to sign nuclear disarmament treaty in Prague
    12/04/2009

    US president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev might arrive in Prague next Friday, to sign a treaty on nuclear disarmament, according to news reports. A Czech TV correspondent in Moscow said on Friday that Russian TV crews received unofficial instructions from the Kremlin to apply for Czech visas and book live feeds from Prague for that day. While the Kremlin press office told Czech Radio that Helsinki and Geneva are also being considered as possible venues, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout said that the choice of Prague was unlikely.

    The United States and Russia are finalizing a new nuclear disarmament treaty to replace the START II agreement from 1993 which will expire on Saturday. Negotiations about the new treaty started after President Barack Obama outlined his nuclear disarmament policy in a public speech delivered at Prague Castle in April this year.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Poll: Most Czechs believe Beneš decrees should remain valid
    12/04/2009

    A poll by the CVVM agency released on Friday shows that 65 percent of Czechs believe the post-war Beneš decrees which legalised the expulsion of some three million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia should remain valid. Two years ago, only about 50 percent of Czechs held the same opinion. 47 percent of Czechs also believe that the expulsion was just. The decrees put out by President Edvard Beneš still remains a sensitive issue in the Czech Republic.

    In a reaction to Nazi atrocities during war, around three million German citizens of Czechoslovakia were stripped of their nationality and expelled from the country between 1945 and 1947, while their property was confiscated. It is estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 Germans were killed in the process.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Authorities distribute second batch of swine flu vaccines
    12/04/2009

    Czech health authorities began distributing a second batch of 72,000 swine flu vaccines around the country on Friday. Health Minister Dana Jurásková ordered selected vaccination centres to give the vaccines to children over 10 years of age with serious health risks. However, many Czech patients and physicians remain sceptical and refuse the vaccines.
    Author: Jan Richter

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