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09/28/2009
In other news, a politician for the Christian Democrats has offered his resignation following a recent bribery scandal in which politicians from various parties were offered money for political favours. Jíri Stodůlka, the general secretary for the Christian Democratic Party, was apparently inclined to accept a party donation of one million crowns from an undercover reporter for the daily Mladá fronta Dnes if he would pressure his party to withdraw from a proposal to tax casino owners. The party’s chairman, Cyril Svoboda, said he had received an offer of resignation from Mr Stodůlka and that it would be discussed by the party’s heads on Tuesday. Communist Party leader Vojtěch Filip said over the weekend that he would quit the party himself if two members of his party who accepted the fictitious deal did not resign. One current member of parliament standing as a candidate for the new centre-right party TOP 09 resigned hours after the newspaper published its report on Saturday.
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09/28/2009
The Euro Health Consumer Index has ranked the Czech health care system 13th out of 32 European states compared, giving the country a rating of “solid average”. The consumer index, now in its fifth year, rates six areas of health care, from the information available to patients and the scope of services to the length of waiting lists for certain operations. The report suggested that the Czech Republic review the funding ratio for health care workers versus technology and medicines. The Czech Republic held the 16th rung on the list in 2008, and now ranks between Estonia and Ireland. The Netherlands and Austria received the best ratings in Europe, while Macedonia and Latvia were the lowest.
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09/28/2009
Caretaker Prime Minister Jan Fischer has said that the government will continue to meet with teachers and public administrators to discuss budget cuts approved by parliament on Friday that will decrease their salaries by 4%. Speaking on TV Prima on Sunday, Mr Fischer said that he had already discussed the matter at length with the head of the relevant labour union and that parliamentary approval of the package was not necessarily the last word on the issue. The wage reductions for state employees entail cuts of around 1,000 crowns for teachers for example, and were projected to save the budget roughly seven billion crowns. Unions have strongly protested the cuts.
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09/28/2009
The Ministry of the Environment has proposed an act by which it could prohibit the building of roads of more than 10 kilometres in length if it finds that automobile exhaust would overly pollute surrounding areas. Regional authorities would have the same power for other roads, and would be able to stipulate conditions for their construction. If passed, the new act could take effect from the middle of 2010.
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09/28/2009
Around 9,000 people took to the town square in Hradec Králové on Monday for the seventh annual St. Václav’s Day celebration. The celebration’s organisers said this year’s turnout had set the record for the event, which has a special focus on horses and equestrian spectacles. The highlight of the event was a traditional blessing of horses carried out by the town’s bishop; there was also an exhibition of horses, a display of western-style riding, and the arrival of the horse-drawn retinue of St. Václav himself.
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09/28/2009
Prague hotels recorded a sharp, year-on-year decline in occupancy of 45% for September, leaving some hoteliers talking about the worst season on record. The statistic comes from the market forecasting company STR Global, which surveyed the occupancy rates of roughly 9,000 rooms. In the first half of the year the Czech Republic was visited by 2.7 million tourists, a year-on-year decrease of 12% nationwide and 11% in Prague. Similar trends are expected for the first half of 2010.
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09/28/2009
A small aircraft crashed near the South Bohemian town of České Bujdějovice on Monday morning, shortly after taking off from the airstrip. The pilot, an experienced, 72-year-old plane mechanic, succumbed to serious injuries soon after the accident. The aircraft, an ultra-light Kolibřík, fell from a height of several dozen metres. A spokeswoman for the South Bohemian police said their specialists are investigating the cause of the accident.
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09/27/2009
Celebrating an open-air mass attended by a crowd of 120,000 in Brno, Pope Benedict XVI warned that scientific and economic progress were not enough to guarantee the moral welfare of society. Preaching in the largely secular Czech Republic, the pontiff said people needed to be liberated from material oppressions, but more profoundly, they needed to be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit. During Sunday’s mass the pope consecrated crosses and statues while hundreds of priests distributed hosts among believers.
On Monday Pope Benedict will celebrate mass in the town of Stará Boleslav, north of Prague, the centre of annual celebrations held in honour of St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech nation, who was murdered in the town on September 28, 935.
The Pope’s three-day visit to the Czech Republic is a pastoral one intended to bring a message of faith and hope to Czechs 20 years after the fall of communism. The controversial issue of property restitution was discussed only marginally. Following a meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on Saturday, the Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said the Vatican was ready to defer property disputes with the Czech state for the time being in view of the economic crisis.
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09/27/2009
The huge anchor and cross which were erected in Brno on the site where the pope celebrated mass will be preserved as reminders of the papal visit. A spokeswoman for the Brno Bishopric said the original plan was for the 12-metre-tall anchor to have been recycled, but the Bishopric had decided to preserve it as a symbol of hope – the main message of Pope Benedict’s visit to Brno. The anchor will be placed on the banks of the Brno dam, the cross can be viewed in the Capuchin gardens.
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09/27/2009
Prague Archbishop Miloslav Vlk has assessed his twenty years in office with a critical eye, saying there was little to show for his efforts. In an interview for Czech public television on Sunday, the cardinal pointed out that the restitution of church assets remained unresolved, as did the ownership of Prague’s famous St. Vitus Cathedral, he said he had failed to push though an amendment to the church law and the Czech Republic was one of the few remaining countries which do not have a treaty with the Vatican. Cardinal Vlk said there had been no lack of effort on his part but that political circumstances had not been in his favour. The head of the Czech Catholic Church is planning to retire from his post before the end of the year.
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