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11/01/2007
Newspaper Lidove noviny reported on Thursday that, according to statistics released by the World Bank, corruption in Czech state institutions had worsened in the last ten years. The bank ranked the Czech Republic as the second worst country in Europe, when it came to government employees accepting bribes. According to the data, the Czech Republic is the only new EU member country in which the problem of corruption within state institutions has grown. The Centre for Economic Studies in Prague conducted its own research alongside that of the bank's, and found that the situation was not helped by the fact that Czechs found bribery and corruption normal aspects of everyday life.
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11/01/2007
On Thursday, the Defence Ministry announced that a further round of talks on the proposed American radar base to be built in the Czech Republic had come to a close. Czech and American representatives had been meeting to discuss the wording of a bilateral agreement which would define the legal status of the military base and its employees, weapons' regulations on the base, and Czech access to the radar, among other points. According to a Defence Ministry spokesperson, the talks will continue into the next couple of months until an agreement can be found on the wording of the text. Despite the ongoing negotiations, it is still uncertain whether there will be a US missile defence shield built in the Czech Republic at all. The radar still has to be approved by the Czech parliament and the president. The White House is only expecting a final decision from the Czechs in 2008.
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11/01/2007
Former Civic Democrat MP Miroslav Macek has been fined by a Prague court for slapping former health minister David Rath at a meeting of Czech dentists. The altercation took place in May 2006, when Mr Rath was addressing a conference, and when Mr Macek attacked him from behind. Following the incident, Mr Rath demanded an apology and 1 million CZK (50,000 USD) worth of damages from Mr Macek. On Wednesday, a Prague court fined Mr Macek 3,000 CZK (150 USD) for his conduct. Mr Macek, who said at the time that he had been 'settling a personal account', told journalists on Wednesday that he would never be ashamed of what he had done.
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11/01/2007
Unemployment amongst Czech school leavers has reached a ten-year low, reported the Czech National Institute of Technical and Vocational Education on Thursday. In September, just under 32,000 school leavers were registered as unemployed in the Czech Republic, which is down 10,000 on last year's figures. In total, school leavers make up 8.6% of the country's unemployed. The drop in unemployment among school leavers has been attributed to the increased number of secondary school students going on to university, and the current strength of the Czech economy.
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11/01/2007
Figures released by the Czech National Bank on Thursday showed that household debt in the Czech Republic stood at 662 billion CZK (33.1 billion USD) at the end of September this year. This amount was up nearly 13 billion CZK on the previous month. The head of the bank, Zdenek Tuma, reacted by saying that such a rapid growth in household debt was not sustainable, but that, for the time being, there was 'no significant risk' posed by the rate of household debt.
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10/31/2007
Canada is dropping its visa requirement for Czech tourists from midnight on Wednesday, the Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, announced at a special news conference. The Canadian authorities say, however, that they will reintroduce a visa regime for Czech citizens if there is a significant increase in the number of Czechs applying for asylum in Canada. Ottawa imposed the visa requirement in 1997 after an influx of Czech asylum-seekers.
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10/31/2007
Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has said Deputy Prime Minister Jiri Cunek will have to leave the government if he cannot plausibly and quickly refute allegations he abused the social welfare system. A Czech Television programme this week alleged that during the 1990s Mr Cunek collected social welfare while at the same time lodging millions of crowns in different bank accounts. Members of the party Mr Cunek leads, the Christian Democrats, have also called for him to clear up the matter. The deputy prime minister denies the allegations.
Jiri Cunek has frequently been in the headlines since he entered national politics last year. He was accused of racism after moving Romany rent-defaulters out of the Moravian town where he was mayor, while for a time his position in government was under threat due to alleged bribe-taking, though those allegations never made it to court.
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10/31/2007
The Chamber of Deputies has passed a bill tightening the rules on foreigners applying for permanent residence or asylum in the Czech Republic. Under the new legislation, which still has to go before the Senate and the president, foreigners who marry Czech citizens will have to wait two years before being able to apply for a permanent residence permit; currently they can apply as soon as they get married. Passing an exam in the Czech language will also be a prerequisite for getting a permanent residence permit. The bill passed by the lower house on Wednesday also defines conditions for the treatment of foreigners who apply for asylum at Prague Airport. The Czech Interior Ministry says the tougher rules are necessary in view of the fact the country will join the Schengen zone later this year.
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10/31/2007
A group of neo-Nazi extremists who have been barred from holding a march through Prague's Jewish Quarter say they will break the law and go ahead with it anyway, if they do not receive permission to march on an alternative route. The far-right Young National Democrats lost a legal battle to march through the Jewish Quarter on November 10, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogrom of 1938. In a statement on their website, the group said the Prague Town Hall had this week refused to grant them permission to march on eight other routes.
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10/31/2007
A doctor and nurse dismissed from a hospital in Trebic after a high-profile baby mix-up have been reinstated. The head of the hospital's children's unit, Jan Kozak, and the unit's senior nurse, Jitka Pospisilova, were fired in October after it emerged that two babies were accidentally swapped at birth almost a year ago. However, both have now been offered their positions back by the hospital, and have accepted, Dr Kozak told reporters.
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