News

The Chamber of Deputies has overridden a veto by President Václav Klaus and passed an amendment to the law on conflict of interest. Mr Klaus, alongside the Senate, rejected the bill because it demands that even head teachers declare their property holdings. However, the minister of education, Ondřej Liška, said he would draft an amendment exempting principals from such declarations. The law was broadly intended to allow the public access to the property declarations of politicians.

A young Czech woman died on Sunday night after driving into a canal in Ireland, the Irish Independent reported. The woman, who was in her 20s, was trapped under water for more than an hour when the vehicle overturned in the canal, which is beside the River Boyne in County Meath. A passenger in the car managed to get out of the vehicle and raise the alarm, though emergency services, including divers, failed to save the driver, who has not been named.

The daughter of former Czech tennis star Petr Korda has qualified for a prestigious women’s golf tournament at the age of 15. Jessica Kordová made it into the US Open after doing well at a qualifying tournament in Florida. Petr Korda won tennis’s Australian Open in 1998, though soon afterwards became the first well known player to test positive for a banned substance.

Military police on Monday started forcibly evicting Greenpeace activists from their camp in the Brdy military area, where they have spent the past six weeks protesting against the siting of a US missile defense radar on Czech soil. Around twenty Greenpeace activists set up camp in the grass clearing chosen by officials from the U.S. Missile Defence Agency for the radar facility and have refused to budge in spite of repeated warnings that they were trespassing on military grounds. After cutting them off from visitors and waiting in vain for hunger and thirst to drive them away the military police launched a forcible eviction on Monday. According to the CTK news agency the activists were taken away for questioning.