News

The leading Czech men's tennis player Tomas Berdych is now ninth in the world rankings, his highest placing to date. The 21-year-old climbed from tenth after reaching the third round at a tournament in Cincinnati. Berdych's girlfriend Lucie Safarova is now 22nd in the women's world rankings, which is also a career best.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek arrived at an agreement with the critics of the proposed fiscal reform from within his own party, the Civic Democrats, Czech TV reported on Sunday. The critics now say they will vote for the reform in the Lower House on Tuesday. The Civic Democratic MPs, with former finance minister Vlastimil Tlusty among them, criticized the fact that the overall tax burden in 2009 would be in fact higher than the year before. The Civic Democrats will incorporate their objections into the fiscal reform package when it is debated in the Senate where the coalition has a vast majority of seats. The reform package was approved by the Lower House in the second reading on Wednesday. Ludvik Hovorka of the Christian Democrats, the only coalition MP to vote against it, told Czech TV on Sunday that he would consider voting for the reform on Tuesday as well.

Czech rider Lukas Pesek finished third in the 125 cc motorcycle race in the Grand Prix of the Czech Republic in Brno on Sunday. In the qualifier on Saturday, Lukas Pesek crashed but managed to secure fifth starting position. On Sunday, he started the race slow and fell to tenth position but slowly advanced forward. In the middle of the race, he was in the leading group of five, and in the dramatic last lap, Pesek overtook Hungary's Gabor Talmacsi, the leading rider of the series, and came in third, marking the first medal position for a Czech rider at Brno Grand Prix since 1971. Lukas Pesek's 15-year-old brother Karel, who was awarded a wild card by the organizers, managed to qualify for the race and finished last.

Twenty one Czech citizens are missing abroad, a foreign ministry spokesperson told the CTK news agency on Sunday. The number has increased by six since last year. Four Czechs have disappeared in the U.K. where they were seeking employment, and two Czech nationals have gone missing in Turkey. According to the ministry, no new information exists in the cases of three young Czechs who disappeared in the mountains of Albania in 2001 and a Czech woman who was last seen in Ecuador in the same year. In related news, 52 Czech citizens have died abroad since June, the foreign ministry informed. Most of them - twelve - died in Croatia, the most popular tourist destination for Czech holidaymakers.