• 01/11/2006

    A record 600,000 cars were manufactured in the Czech Republic last year. Almost 500,000 of those vehicles were produced by Skoda Auto, with the rest made at a plant opened by Toyota and Peugeot Citroen last February. The Toyota-Peugeot Citroen plant has the capacity to make many more cars, up to 300,000 a year. A similar number could be produced by Hyundai, if it builds a plant in Moravia; a decision on that deal is due by the end of the month.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 01/11/2006

    The Czech crown hit a record high of 28.70 against the euro on Wednesday. Analysts said all currencies in the central Europe region had strengthened.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 01/11/2006

    DNA tests which showed a gorilla born at Prague Zoo was male were wrong, say the organisers of a project in which the zoo's gorillas are shown live on the internet; they say new tests they ordered show that Moja, the first gorilla born in this country, is actually female, as was originally believed.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 01/10/2006

    General practitioners are once again threatening to strike in protest of delayed payments from the General Health Insurance Company, VZP. GPs say they are getting payments up to a month late despite the fact that the General Health Insurance Company is under forced administration, a move that the health minister David Rath said would secure financial stability. The health ministry is likewise under pressure from chemists who are threatening to strike over the government's decision to lower their profit margins by 3 percent as of January 1st. The opposition Civic Democrats have strongly criticized the health minister for his performance in office, saying that the radical measures he has effected have merely heightened the crisis in the Czech health sector.

  • 01/10/2006

    Three young Germans of Russian origin have been handed lengthy jail sentences for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a prostitute in the Czech Republic. The regional court in the southern German city of Heilbronn found that the three men had planned to sell the sex worker from the Czech border city of Plzen to a brothel in Germany. The judges said the leader of the group hatched the plot because he was 30,000 euros in debt. They raped and killed the 37 year old woman after failing to beat her into submission, for fear that she would report them to the police. Two of them received life sentences, the third was handed a fifteen year prison sentence.

  • 01/10/2006

    The chief obstetrician of a maternity hospital stands charged with causing death through negligence after he ordered the transfer of a mother in labour to a different hospital where her baby was born stillborn. The state attorney on the case claims that a proper examination of the mother -including an ultrasound - would have shown that she needed immediate care and that further loss of time would put hers and the baby's life in danger. If found guilty, the obstetrician could face up to five years in prison.

  • 01/09/2006

    A second high-profile Czech businessman returned from aboard this week to face criminal charges. Jiri Syrovatka, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for his alleged role in a tax fraud case, had been in the United States on holiday. A co-defendant in the case, businessman Tomas Pitr, had returned home to the Czech Republic from neighbouring Austria on Thursday. Both men have filed appeals but were considered high risks for flight. Had Syrovatka not returned to the country by this Monday, police would have issued an international arrest warrant.

    Author: Brian Kenety
  • 01/09/2006

    A former Czech army doctor imprisoned for killing the Nigerian consul in Prague in 2003 will not serve out his sentence. Prague court officials decided on Monday to release Jiri Pasovsky, aged 74, due to his poor health. Pasovsky shot dead the Nigerian consul and wounded another embassy employee, whom he blamed for not helping him after Pasovsky fell victim to a financial scam. He received an eight-year jail sentence in June last year, which was reduced to five years on appeal. Pasovsky's lawyer said he is suffering from cancer and other illnesses.

    Author: Brian Kenety
  • 01/09/2006

    A Czech delegation left for South Korea on Monday for talks with representatives of the carmaker Hyundai, which is considering investing some 1.2 billion dollars into a new plant in Ostrava. In hopes of finalising a deal, apart from other incentives and tax breaks, the Czech delegation will present the government's plan to improve regional infrastructure and widen a highway reaching the border with Slovakia, where Hyundai has a subsidiary. The carmaker has said it will make a final decision this month.

    Author: Brian Kenety
  • 01/09/2006

    In related news, the Czech state agency for attracting investment, CzechInvest, said on Monday that it had helped secure 154 foreign and local investment projects worth 3.1 billion dollars last year - a record number of projects. CzechInvest head Tomas Hruda said the new projects would help create some 22,000 new jobs.

    Author: Brian Kenety

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