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07/08/2009
President Václav Klaus handed out 15 pardons on Wednesday, four of them to foreign nationals. Mr Klaus cancelled the repatriation of two Vietnamese citizens who were going to be sent back to their country because of customs offences they committed more than 20 years ago. The Czech president has handed out around 270 pardons since assuming office in 2003.
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07/08/2009
Some 55 percent of Czechs approved in June of the caretaker government of Jan Fischer, which was nearly three times the number of people who trusted the previous cabinet of PM Mirek Topolánek, according to a new poll by the CVVM agency published on Wednesday. Only 28 percent of people trust the Senate and a mere 25 percent of Czechs trust the Chamber of Deputies. Approval ratings for both houses of the Czech Parliament are up four and six percent, respectively, compared to polls conducted in May.
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07/08/2009
The Liberec Region, in northern Bohemia, has ended negotiations with the firm České Radiokomunikace about the planned purchase of Ještěd hotel and TV tower, the deputy regional governor told the press on Wednesday. The region had earmarked some 100 million crowns, or more than 5.3 million US dollars, in its budget to this end, but regional council members decided to use the money to fund road repairs instead. The award-winning hotel and TV tower was built in 1973 at the top of Ještěd Mountain overlooking the city of Liberec. The region would like to have it included in the UNESCO list of world heritage sites but the building is in urgent need of renovation.
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07/08/2009
Czech hockey player Jiří Hudler has left the NHL and will play for Dynamo Moscow in the Continental League. The 25-year-old forward, who joined the Detroit Red Wings in 2003 and won the Stanley Cup with them five years later, signed a two-year contract with the Moscow club on Wednesday.
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07/07/2009
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout said on Tuesday that Canada had not yet re-introduced visas for Czech nationals and that Prague continued to negotiate with Ottawa in a bid to curb the move. On Friday, Czech Television broadcast a report claiming that the Canadian authorities had already decided to re-implement visas for Czechs and would make a public announcement to this effect on Tuesday. Speaking on Tuesday, however, the Czech foreign minister said that he had ‘no indication’ that the Canadian government was about to make such a move. Canada is thought to want to re-introduce visas for Czechs after receiving over 1,000 asylum claims from Czechs, predominantly Czech Romanies, in the first four months of this year alone.
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07/07/2009
Two registers of alleged agents and collaborators with the former Communist secret police (StB) will appear on the internet this week, the daily Lidové noviny wrote on Tuesday citing former dissident Stanislav Penc. The StB registers of agents, collaborators and even people whom the dreaded secret police investigated are to be put online by Mr Penc himself as a form of protest against the way that these registers are being used by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. The former dissident insists that the institute should not have a monopoly on the registers and says the public has the right to whatever information is available about the past. The head of the institute Pavel Žáček has criticized the move saying that the registers in question are full of mistakes which could do people a great deal of harm. Stanislav Penc is said to have acquired them from Jan Langos, the former head of the Slovak National Memory Institute who died in a road accident in 2006.
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07/07/2009
The Czech Army is planning some 1,800 lay-offs in the coming months, said Chief of Staff General Vlastimil Picek on Tuesday. The redundancies will be made up of 600 civilian staff and 1,200 soldiers, Mr Picek said. The army is laying off employees due to budget cuts at the Defence Ministry brought about by the current economic downturn. In 2009, the Defence Ministry’s budget is down by more than 7 billion crowns (377 million USD) on that of the previous year. A spokesperson also told the press that, for the meantime, the army was not seeking to take on new recruits.
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07/07/2009
A bill which temporarily cuts social insurance payments for employers, to save jobs during the current financial crisis, was signed into law by Czech President Václav Klaus on Tuesday. The law allows firms to pay less social insurance for each of their employees until the end of 2010. It will come into effect on August 1, a spokesperson for the President’s Office said on Tuesday. The law will see employers pay just over three percent less for each of their employees and is aimed at protecting those in the lowest paid jobs, whose positions are most at risk, said Labour and Social Affairs Minister Petr Šimerka on Tuesday. The law forms part of the government’s anti-crisis stimulus package.
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07/07/2009
Revenue generated by the shooting of films in the Czech Republic fell last year by nearly 28 percent. Last year, filmmaking generated 3.5 billion crowns (190 million USD) in the Czech Republic, in 2003, the amount brought in by film production totaled more than double this sum. According to those in the industry, the fall in revenues last year was mainly due to a fall in the number of foreign productions being shot in the Czech Republic – with Hollywood in particular turning its back on this country. Politicians are currently discussing how to amend legislation so as to attract foreign film companies to the country. At the moment, the Czech Republic offers no financial incentives to filmmakers, unlike Germany, France, Great Britain and Hungary.
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07/07/2009
Prague slipped down the rankings of most expensive town for expatriates this year by more than 40 places. In a study conducted by consultancy firm Mercer in 2008, Prague was judged the 29th most expensive town for expats to live in on the planet. This year, Prague ranked 70th on the list. For the study, the cost of accommodation and over 200 different items were noted in 143 cities around the globe. Top of this year’s poll was Tokyo, while the second most expensive place to settle was Osaka. Moscow and Geneva came third and fourth respectively.
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