-
01/25/2008
The head of the president’s office, economist Jiří Weigl, a friend and long-term associate of President Vaclav Klaus, is reportedly a strong candidate for membership on the governing board of the Czech National Bank, the daily E15 has reported. The daily has cited independent sources. According to the newspaper, Mr Weigl could replace outgoing ČNB vice-governor Luděk Niedermayer, whose six-year term expires in February. The paper has written that those familiar with the situation at Prague Castle have said Mr Weigl has not yet reached a final decision. If Vaclav Klaus wins re-election next month, the office head could continue working for the president. Jiří Weigl, an economist, was offered a post on the national bank’s board in the past, but he declined.
-
01/25/2008
A new poll conducted by the Factum Invenio agency has suggested that public preference for the opposition Social Democratic party has continued to grow, with the party earning 38 percent of the vote if a national election were held today. According to the poll, the ruling Civic Democrats would be second, coming in 10 points behind, the Communist Party third at 17.5 percent, and the Greens fourth at 7.6. The Christian Democrats would be last, garnering 6.4 percent of the vote. Surveys have now repeatedly seen the ruling Civic Democrats fall increasingly behind their closest parliamentary rivals in terms of popularity.
-
01/25/2008
The Czech Republic’s Tomáš Verner has won the European figure-skating title, becoming the first Czech to do so in 16 years. Verner, the silver medallist in 2007, beat two-time world champion Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland, who finished second, and defending champion Brian Joubert, who finished third. Verner led after the short programme and finished the competition, held in Zagreb, Croatia, with a final score of 232.67 points. His winning routine was set to the theme of Oscar-winning epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.
-
01/25/2008
In hockey action on Thursday in the NHL Czech forward Radim Vrbata notched a hat trick to lead his team Phoenix over the Nashville Predators 4:3 in overtime. Vrbata scored all three goals in regular time, and also assisted on the winner in OT by Czech defender Zbyněk Michálek. The hat trick is Vrbata’s career third in the NHL.
In other games: Michal Rozsíval helped his New York Rangers defeat Atlanta 2:1, scoring once and earning an assist. New Jersey Devil Patrik Eliáš scored twice against Montreal, but his team still lost to the Habs 4:3.
-
01/24/2008
Representatives of the state and the Czech Catholic church have signed an agreement which deals with the day-to-day running of Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. The cathedral currently belongs to the state, having been seized by the Communists in the 1950s. The church has put in a formal request for the cathedral to be restituted, which is still to be decided upon by a court. On Thursday, delegates from both parties signed an agreement which specified that the state would pay for the upkeep of the cathedral, and that entrance to the place of worship would be for free. According to the newspaper Právo, the church will now pay the state a token rent of 500 CZK (25 USD) a month for the use of the premises. Both parties stressed after the signing of the agreement that this does not resolve the issue of the cathedral’s ownership.
-
01/24/2008
The health minister Tomáš Julínek has said that he will give way to unions’ demands, providing they call off a strike planned for March 5. Hospital workers are unhappy with the Health Ministry’s plans to extend their working week, and change the system of overtime. Mr Julínek told journalists on Thursday that if unions called off their strike within the next 24 hours, then he would scrap his plans to extend hospital staff’s working hours.
-
01/24/2008
The head of the Christian Democrats, Jiří Čunek, has said that it was due to an administrative error that a 1.4 million-crown credit (70,000 USD) on his mortgage was not declared. Mr Čunek was fined 20,000 CZK by an Ostrava court for failing to announce the credit on his mortgage account. He was found guilty of breaching a conflict of interest law which obliges politicians to disclose their income and property assets. In Thursday’s Právo, however, Mr Čunek said that he had not withheld information intentionally, but that it had been an administrative error. Whether this was his or someone else’s error he was unable to say. Other investigations into whether Mr Čunek accepted bribes and misused welfare benefits have recently been dropped.
-
01/24/2008
On Thursday, A Prague court acquitted Zdeněk Doležel of charges of attempted fraud in connection with the privatisation of Unipetrol. Mr Doležel was suspected of demanding a 5 million CZK (250,000 USD) bribe from a Polish businessman when he was secretary to the prime minister in 2005. Jacek Spyra says that he was asked for millions of crowns by Mr Doležel, in return for bringing the firm that Mr Spyra represented back into negotiations. Mr Spyra’s claims appeared to have been reinforced by footage recorded secretly by TV Nova, which shows Mr Doležel asking for ‘five million in Czech’ during one of their meetings. Mr Doležel insists, however, that this was a coded statement meaning something completely different. It is not yet clear whether today’s verdict will be appealed.
-
01/24/2008
The Czech Republic will make a profit out of the EU’s new strategy to cut emissions, reported Lidové noviny on Thursday. The European Commission set targets on Wednesday for each of the 27 EU member states, obliging them to raise to a set percentage the use of renewable energies in their overall energy mix by 2020. Prague has been ordered to practically double its reliance upon renewable energy sources. But, Lidové noviny reports, the Czech Republic will be one of six EU states to actually benefit financially from the plan. Analysts predict that the scheme should raise Czech GDP by 0.51% annually. The Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade has responded by saying that it is impossible to tell whether such estimates will prove to be founded.
-
01/24/2008
In 2007, the Czech Republic received some 49.1 billion CZK (2.46 billion USD) from the European Union. Over the same period, it paid 32.1 billion crowns into the EU coffers. On Thursday, the Ministry of Finance revealed the figures, stressing that the Czech Republic had received 17 billion crowns more from the EU than it had paid in. According to a ministry spokesperson, this was the largest amount the country had received from Brussels since joining the EU in 2004. The Czech Republic received large sums in particular last year from the EU’s structural and cohesion funds.
Pages
- « první
- ‹ předchozí
- …
- 5443
- 5444
- 5445
- 5446
- 5447
- 5448
- 5449
- 5450
- 5451
- …
- následující ›
- poslední »