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06/18/2008
According to new data from the Czech statistics Office, the rising price of food has made groceries the number one expense for most Czechs. The figures reveal that 20.5 percent of expenditures are spent on food, which is a half percent increase on 2007 figures. Coming in second at 20.4 percent are housing costs and utility bills, which led last year’s chart. However, analysts point out that the differences between the two types of expenditures remains small and could be a simple fluctuation.
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06/18/2008
Czech Television has been fined 18.5 million crowns by the oversight and regulatory body known as the Board for Radio and Television Broadcasting. The fine has been levied for what the Board deemed inadequate separation of its programming from those which feature advertising by its sponsors. Czech Television has appealed the decision.
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06/18/2008
Eyebrows were raised in the Czech parliament Wednesday when Christian Democrat minister Cyril Svoboda announced that the original Czech national emblem or coat of arms had gone missing. After MPs began to search their offices, it emerged that the seal had actually disappeared at the Czech castle. The seal, which features two birds and two lions symbolising the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia was created in 1992 by the Czech heraldist Jiří Louda.
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06/18/2008
The Czech crown has broken yet another barrier against the Euro, trading at 24 crowns to one Euro. The currency also broke a record against the dollar, trading at 15.45 crowns to the dollar. The Czech crown has been consistently strong for many months, with some analysts predicting the currency will stabilise by the end of the year.
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06/18/2008
Retired British tennis player Tim Henman has been fending off criticism for comments that Czech tennis players are a bit smelly. The comments came when Henman was asked to reveal any gossip from his years as a competitor at the Wimbledon tennis championships. Henman responded by stating “"Well, the Czechs are a bit niffy." Jan Winkler, the Czech ambassador in London expressed his irritation noting "What a surprise Tim Henman has had the time to do so much research into the smell of the male body." Henman, 33 quit the game last September.
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06/17/2008
The Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, says Ireland’s no to the Lisbon Treaty does not mean the ratification process should come to a halt. Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers, he said, however, that the Czech Republic would have to wait for a ruling from the Constitutional Court; it is due to say in the autumn whether the document reforming the structure of the European Union is in line with the Czech constitution. Minister Schwarzenberg’s position contrasts with that of the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolánek; he told reporters he believed the ratification process in its current form was over.
The most vocal Czech opponent of continuing the ratification process is the Euro-sceptic president, Václav Klaus. He said Ireland’s no vote was a victory for freedom and reason, and thanked Irish voters for putting a brake on what he called top-down centralisation.
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06/17/2008
Meanwhile, the Czech deputy prime minister for European affairs, Alexandr Vondra, said discussion about ratification at a European Council summit on Thursday would be influenced by a vote in the British Parliament on Wednesday. The House of Lords is expected to vote to accept the Lisbon Treaty; that would make things slightly different than after the French and Dutch rejections of the original EU constitution, Mr Vondra said. He did not say what position the Czech Republic would adopt at the European Council meeting.
The Treaty of Lisbon is due to come into effect on January 1 next year, the day the Czech Republic takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union. Implementation of the reform document requires its ratification by all 27 EU members.
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06/17/2008
A court in Brno has begun hearing a case of child abuse which has shocked the Czech Republic. Sickening details have been given of how six adults, including the mysterious Barbora Škrlová, seriously mistreated two boys in the town of Kuřim. The abuse came to light last year after a neighbour picked up a signal from a child minding video device in the flat of Klára Mauerová; it showed that one of her sons, aged seven, was being kept naked in appalling conditions in a cupboard.
In the wake of that discovery, it emerged that Ms Mauerová had tried to adopt 33-year-old Barbora Škrlová in the guise of a 12-year-old girl. The alleged abusers have been linked to a sect headed by Barbora Škrlová’s father; her brother is among the accused.
On Tuesday Klára Mauerová tearfully admitted to mistreating her children, saying she had been manipulated by her sister Kateřina and Barbora Škrlová into taking what she called a harsh approach to child-rearing.
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06/17/2008
A Romany Holocaust documentation and educational centre is set be built on the site of a World War II concentration camp for Romanies at Hodonín in south Moravia, the minister for ethnic minorities and human rights, Džamila Stehlíková, said on Tuesday. Minister Stehlíková said the present owners of the site had agreed to sell it to the state. The centre is due to be built next year. It will be administered by the Museum of Romany Culture in Brno.
Around 90 percent of Bohemia and Moravia’s Romanies were killed during the war. Some of them died at the camp in Hodonín, while others perished at the Lety camp in Bohemia; hundreds of people from both were later murdered at Auschwitz.
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06/17/2008
A fresh criminal complaint has been filed against Jiří Čunek, who is deputy prime minister and minister for regional development. Jiří Jehlička of the Czech Debtors Central Register says in the complaint that a previous investigation into allegations Mr Čunek took bribes failed to address important issues in the case. The police’s anti-corruption unit are now examining whether there was indeed a failure to follow correct procedure. Mr Čunek quit his two cabinet posts but was reinstated when the bribe-taking investigation was dropped by a state attorney. The Christian Democrats leader has been involved in a number of scandals, including over apparent racist comments he made about the Czech Republic’s Romany minority.
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