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A newly released survey from the STEM polling agency suggests that most Czechs have not forgiven Russia for invading their country in August 1968. The invasion by Warsaw Pact forces was undertaken under the mantra of helping a brotherly nation, although the actual aims were to suppress growing democratic tendencies in the former Czechoslovakia. The findings of this latest survey suggest that 64% have not forgiven Russia for their “assistance”. The Czech Republic will mark the formal 40 year anniversary of the invasion on Thursday.

Czech president Václav Klaus has said that the Georgian government is responsible for the country’s current conflict with Russia. Mr Klaus criticized the Georgian government’s behaviour, as well the Western media’s reaction to the conflict, in a letter to the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes on Monday. President Klaus said on Friday that he thought Russia had more justification than ever for its actions following Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia earlier this year. He called the attitude of Western leaders towards the crisis in Georgia ‘hypocritical’, given the way they had reacted to Kosovo. Mr Klaus’s views are at odds with those held by the Czech government on the Georgian situation. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg has blamed the conflict in Georgia on Russia.

Ten former managers of the Trend and Mercia investment funds have been sentenced by a Hradec Kralové court for illegally stripping the trusts’ assets. Miroslav Hálek, who is thought to have been behind the fraud, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Five other senior managers received lesser prison sentences, while four of those convicted were handed suspended sentences. The men were found guilty of embezzling more than 1.4 billion crowns (84.25 billion USD) from the two funds during the mid-nineties. One man was cleared of all charges.

Czechs spent over 28 billion crowns (1.7 billion USD) on their health last year – on top of the health insurance deducted from their wages. In the last five years, the amount that Czechs contribute towards their medicines has been raised from ten to 12 percent of the drug’s total cost. A study conducted by the Institute of Health Information and Statistics found that the amount Czechs had shelled out on medicines had risen from 20 billion crowns in 2003 to almost 28 billion crowns last year. Overall, some 231 billion crowns were spent on healthcare in the Czech Republic in 2007, the study found.