News

Czech speed skater and athlete of the year Martina Sáblíková has confirmed dominance in the 5,000 metres by winning the event at the World Cup race in Hamar, Norway on Saturday. Sáblíková finished with a time of 6:51.83 (a track record) – 4.74 seconds ahead of nearest rival Claudia Pechstein. Sáblíková is atop the World Cup standings with 480 points, followed by Germany’s Pechstein (320), and Canada’s Hughes (285).

In hockey: the NHL’s All-Star Game between the Eastern and Western Conferences is set to take place on Sunday, with two Czech players on the Eastern conference roster. They are Tomáš Kabrle, defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs and goalie Tomáš Vokoun, who plays for the Florida Panthers. The All-Star Game has a long tradition in the NHL; last year the showcase match was won by the West by a score of 12:9.

Czech President Václav Klaus, speaking at the Czech Senate on Friday to commemorate the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, has said that the extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime should not be forgotten and should remain an everlasting memento. He added on the occasion that it was necessary to recall the crimes against humanity committed against the Jewish population due to efforts by some to re-write the past for political purposes. Holocaust Remembrance Day, honouring the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust in World War Two, is marked on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the Czech Republic, like in most European Union member states, the day has been officially marked since 2004. Besides Mr Klaus, the special session in the Senate on Friday was also attended by Senate chairman Přemysl Sobotka, Chamber of Deputies chairman Miloslav Vlček and others.

The Czech ombudsman, Otakár Motejl, has revealed that Polish nationals recruited by an agency to work for car producer Škoda Auto on a temporary basis were treated worse than fulltime Czech colleagues. Checks at the jobs agency, Zetka Auto, which recruited the workers, uncovered “extensive shortcomings” the ombudsman made clear in a year-end report. The Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza first raised the alarm in October 2006: the jobs agency at the time admitted that it paid workers a monthly wage of little over 10 thousand crowns per month, around half the regular salary in the sector. The daily charged that the some 900 Polish workers were sometimes forced to work 16 hours without a break, that wages were often paid late and that they were a fraction of what workers had been promised. Legal proceedings were launched against Zetka Auto following an investigation by the Czech labour office. Following the scandal, Škoda Auto changed its procedure for selecting agencies recruiting temporary labour.