News

A young mother who is attempting to regain the baby daughter she left in a “babybox” in January will not yet have the child returned to her, authorities in the woman’s town of Havířov said on Friday. The case was highly publicised as the first of its kind in the country and the return of the child has been complicated by the fact that the baby was found to have previously suffered a broken arm, a fact that the police are currently investigating. Whether Barbora is returned to her single mother will hinge on the results of that case and on an expert determination the woman’s parenting skills. The mother is herself currently in the care of her boyfriend’s mother and was found to be lacking a suitable home environment for the child.

15 babies have been left in “babyboxes” since the system was introduced in the Czech Republic in 2005. The hatches are intended as a way for parents in dire straits to anonymously and legally relinquish a small child to foster care.

The general slump in the transportation industry has not bypassed Prague’s Ruzyně airport, which has recorded a year-on-year decrease in passengers of 14% for January. Along with the reduction in travellers, the density of traffic has also dropped off by 10%, with less than 12.000 airplanes departing from the airport in January. Cargo transportation also has plunged by more than 25%. The reduced traffic figures are occurring at a time when the state is seeking to sell the company to a strategic investor, a transaction that could bring the Czech Republic as much as 100 billion crowns.

The STEM polling agency has released the results of a poll showing that three out of four Czechs see a solidified EU defence policy as more important than security cooperation with the United States. The results of the poll directly relate to public opinion surveys regarding the proposed building of a US radar base in the country. According to those polls, only 28 percent of Czech citizens are in favour of the presence of such an installation on Czech soil.

Czech President Václav Klaus has spoken out against the hefty financial stimulus packages being implemented by political leaders around the world in the face of an economic downturn. In an article in the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, Mr Klaus also accused world leaders of ‘raising panic’ at a time of crisis. He reiterated his calls for less, and not more, regulation of financial markets in a time of recession. The president warned against throwing money at the economy which ‘our children and grandchildren will have to repay’. Last month President Václav Klaus likened the current financial downturn to a flu, which goes away in seven days, whether you treat it or not. On Thursday, the Czech president said that politicians should stop meeting for ‘merely demonstrative’ summits, which only ‘increased panic’.