News

An Australian court has ruled that six-year-old Tereza Vichnarová, who was kidnapped and flown to Australia by her father, should be returned to her mother’s care. Tereza disappeared at Easter during a long weekend with her father and was flown out of Europe before her mother reported her failure to return home. As Tereza’s father did not break Australian law through his actions, the Czech authorites were helpless, but the girl’s mother flew to Australia and fought a legal battle to have Tereza returned to her care. Mother and daughter are expected to return to the Czech Republic in the next few days.

Shareholders in the Czech energy giant ČEZ decided at a general meeting on Wednesday to buy back up to ten percent of the company’s share capital. Management of Central Europe’s largest electricity producer proposed to buy back up to 53.8 million shares in the next 18 months at prices ranging from 300 CZK (18.8 USD) to 2,000 CZK (126 USD) apiece. It was also decided at the meeting that the firm would pay a record dividend of 40 CZK (2.5 USD) per share before taxes from last year’s record profits. It is thought the Czech state will receive around 15.2 billion CZK (955 million USD) from the payout.

An artist who replaced the pictures of the red and green men at over 50 sets of traffic lights was found guilty of vandalism on Wednesday and fined 60,000 CZK (3,770 USD). David Brudňák replaced the traditional images of red and green men with pictures of women in skirts, hangmen and men urinating. The Prague 7 court which ruled on the verdict also ordered Mr Brudňák to pay the city council nearly 82,000 CZK (5,150 USD) in damages. Mr Brudňák is thought to work under the pseudonym of Roman Týc, he is also thought to be a member of the controversial Ztohoven group of artists, who made the headlines last June when they hijacked a Czech Television show to display images of a nuclear bomb blast.

The ruling Civic Democratic Party has failed to convince three party rebels to support a controversial bill on the restitution of church property, which has caused friction in the governing coalition. Under the government-proposed bill, the state would compensate churches for property confiscated by the communists to the tune of 83 billion crowns. However steep interest rates on the phased-off, 60-year-payments would bring the final sum to 270 billion crowns, which not only the opposition parties but three Civic Democrat deputies consider excessively generous. After the three Civic Democrat rebels blocked the bill’s passage in the lower house a few weeks ago debate on it was postponed until June. The Christian Democrats of the governing coalition have indicated that failure to push through the bill could seriously undermine the stability of the coalition government.