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02/25/2008
The Czech musician Markéta Irglová and her Irish partner Glen Hansard have won an Academy Award for best original song for Falling Slowly from the low-budget film Once, in which both starred. There was loud cheering at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, when Irglová, collecting the award, told the audience that the song’s success was “proof that no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible”. Hers was not the only Czech success at the 80th Oscars ceremony: The Counterfeiters, based on a book by 90-year-old Prague resident Adolf Burger, took the award for best foreign language film.
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02/25/2008
The Town Hall in Plzeň will not try to prevent the neo-Nazi march scheduled to take place on March 1 from being held but it will provide extensive security measures. The authorities in Plzeň had banned a previous march planned for January 19, arguing that it was organized in protest of restrictions of freedom of speech. The organizers, with links to Czech neo-Nazi movement, contested the ban at a court which said Plzeň City Hall did not have the right to ban it. The City Hall then complained about the verdict at the Supreme Administrative Court which has confirmed the ruling. The City Hall wants to lodge an appeal at the Constitutional Court.
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02/25/2008
The governor of the Czech National Bank Zdeněk Tůma was nominated by the government for the post of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. EU finance ministers will discuss the nomination in March, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said. The second consecutive four-year term of the current president Jean Lemierre will expire in July. The Czech Republic is the first of the post-communist states to have stopped drawing money from the EBRD last October. It has remained in the bank as a shareholder and co-finances projects in third markets.
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02/25/2008
The Czech Republic has not been implementing EU directives into its statute books on time and may face court proceedings and fines by the European Commission, the daily Právo reported. The Czech Republic, which is reportedly lagging behind all other EU countries in this respect, has yet to implement 55 directives on the EU internal market. The country has been having trouble meeting the deadlines for several years, with the biggest delay in health care. The Finance Ministry has dismissed the criticism, claiming that the Czech Republic is no worse than most other EU countries in this regard.
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02/25/2008
Prague District Court has acquitted former health minister Marie Součková of charges of breach of trust and abuse of public office. Ms Součková was prosecuted for signing a contract between the Health Ministry and lawyer Zdeněk Nováček which concerned legal aid in the state's dispute with the Diag Human company. The contract was allegedly disadvantageous for the state. It promised Mr Nováček 10 million crowns for representing the state and another 170 million if he won the case. Ms Součková faced up to ten years in prison.
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02/25/2008
A German religious order has failed in a bid to win control of the Bouzov Castle in Moravia. The Czech Constitutional Court rejected the group’s appeal against a previous court ruling, saying there was no evidence that the German Order – a Roman Catholic religious order – was a legal successor to the Order of Teutonic Knights, which owned the castle before the war. Bouzov Castle - first mentioned in records dating back to the 14th century - is one of the best known tourist sites in the Olomouc region.
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02/24/2008
Crowds gathered in Prague’s Saint Vitus Cathedral this Sunday at a special mass to commemorate the victims of communism. Worship was led by bishop Václav Malý, who referred to the Communist coup of February 1948 in his sermon as a ‘tragedy, which should never be repeated’. Bishop Malý also preached forgiveness, asking victims of the communist regime to ‘forgive, but not forget’. The service comes a day before the 60th anniversary of the so-called ‘bloodless coup’, when Communist forces seized power in post-war Czechoslovakia. In the period of Communist rule from 1948 to 1989, over 262,000 political prisoners were jailed or sent to labour camps, where thousands perished. A further 241 people were executed, having been found guilty of performing ‘anti-communist acts’.
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02/24/2008
Around one hundred people turned out on Wenceslas Square on Sunday afternoon to commemorate the Communist coup of 1948. The majority of those present were young people, from the Scouts, the Young Christian Democrats and the Young Conservatives in particular. There were, however, also several older people there who had witnessed the events of February 1948 first hand. They addressed the crowds - in the words of one of the other orators, Mirko Št’astný - ‘to remind them of the horrors that the Czech people lived through’ during the communist period. It was on Wenceslas Square on February 25, 1948, that thousands gathered calling for the then president, Edvard Beneš, to resign, and for Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald to replace him at Prague Castle.
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02/24/2008
Senior members of the Czech Green Party met in Prague on Sunday to discuss party policy. On the agenda were American proposals to build a missile-defence shield in the Czech Republic. The Greens are split on whether such a radar base should be built on Czech soil, and at Sunday’s meeting, the suggestion of having an in-party referendum on the matter was discussed. Also discussed at Sunday’s meeting were healthcare fees, introduced last month by the government coalition, of which the Green Party is a member. Some quarters in the Green Party want to reserve their opinions on healthcare fees until the government next discusses the topic, other Greens want the party leadership to pressurize the coalition into changing aspects of the system of healthcare fees immediately.
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02/24/2008
One Green Party senator who was not at Sunday’s meeting was foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Mr Schwarzenberg was admitted to hospital on Sunday, where he will undergo heart surgery. It is thought that the foreign minister will spend ten to fourteen days in hospital. There is some speculation that upon his release from hospital, Mr Schwarzenberg may resign from his post as minister for health reasons. His long-term adversary in the government, the Christian Democrat leader Jiří Čunek, is expected to make a return to the cabinet during Mr Schwarzenberg’s hospitalization. Mr Čunek resigned in November, dogged by several corruption scandals, in the face of which, Mr Schwarzenberg says, he has never convincingly proved his innocence. Mr Schwarzenberg has said that he is unable to sit in the same cabinet as someone who is unable to disprove corruption allegations.
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