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A new opinion poll suggests two thirds of Czechs are against the planned construction of a United States radar base in central Bohemia. Sixty-seven percent of respondents in a poll carried out by the CVVM agency in September said they were opposed to the radar, a figure in line with a number of earlier surveys on the issue. The Czech Republic has reached agreement with the US on the base, with the Czech Parliament due to vote on the matter later this year.

Romany residents reacted angrily to a so-called patrol by a nationalist group in Litvínov, north Bohemia on Saturday. Around 70 people armed with sticks, golf clubs and other improvised weapons spat and swore at members of the little-known nationalist organisation the Workers Party, who were attempting to carry out what they called a monitoring patrol of the housing estate where the Romanies live. The local police were on the scene and the two sides did not come to blows. The Litvínov authorities have expressed opposition to such “patrols”; the town’s deputy mayor said the police had been given a video recording of Saturday’s incident, and called on them to take action against the dozen Workers Party members involved. The police barred the Workers Party from entering the housing estate in question for the rest of the weekend on public order grounds.

In a poll released just a fortnight before regional elections, 48 percent of respondents said they would like to see fundamental changes in regional leadership. Nearly two thirds of those surveyed in the STEM poll said their attitude to politics at the national level would influence their vote in regional elections on October 17 and 18. The largest party in the coalition government, the Civic Democrats, hold 12 of the country’s 13 regional governorships. The Czech Republic introduced the current system of regional administration in the year 2000.

A government appointed commission on energy policy envisages the life of the Czech Republic’s two nuclear power plants being extended for several decades, the website ekonom.cz reported. The recommendation is included in the commission’s final report, which has been posted on the internet to allow for opposing arguments to be submitted. The commission, led by renowned scientist Václav Pačes, says if their lives are extended, the Temelín nuclear station could serve until 2062 and the Dukovany plant until 2045.