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08/23/2008
A middle-aged couple from Brno who were accused of abusing their adopted children have been released from custody. They were charged on the grounds of a complaint made by one of the underage boys who said his adoptive parents tended to be violent. He is said to have recorded such an incident on his mobile phone. The police have now questioned all fifteen children who were in their care. The couple were highly respected for adopting physically and mentally handicapped children for whom it was difficult to find homes and last year they received an award from President Klaus. Their neighbours claim all the children were well cared for and they had never noticed any signs of abuse or violence on the children. However there have also been suggestions that the burden was simply too great and may have led to excesses. If found guilty they could face a sentence of two to eight years in prison.
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08/23/2008
Thirty-four year old Petra Paroubková, wife of Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek has been hospitalized with health complications after losing her baby. Mr. Paroubek confirmed the news in a statement for the press on Friday, saying that the spontaneous abortion was a bad blow to both of them and asking the press to respect their privacy.
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08/23/2008
The Trutnov Open Air Music Festival originally known as “the Woodstock of the East" is well into its third day, attended among others by the former Czech president Václav Havel who has been a big fan ever since the festival was established in 1987. The highlight of Saturday’s concert will be the appearance of the US band Soulfly. This year the open-air concert is symbolically devoted to the victims of the 1989 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
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08/23/2008
Prague mayor Pavel Bém has swapped his place for three days with the mayor of Sucha Loz, a small village in Moravia. The initiative came from the mayor of the village who challenged Mr. Bém to try being in charge of a community which received much smaller subsidies per head than Prague. While the mayor of Sucha Loz is briefly taking care of Mr. Bém’s duties in Prague, Pavel Bém is holding debates with the locals on necessary maintenance work on the village square, this year’s harvest and ways of attracting tourists to the sleepy Moravian village.
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08/23/2008
The inhabitants of a small Bohemian village have been asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want the mayor to introduce a ban on the use of lawnmowers over the weekend. Němčovice has close to a hundred inhabitants and this is the first referendum of its kind. Mayor Karel Ferschmann says it is an attempt to get people to be more active in local politics and let them know that their views count.
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08/22/2008
The Chamber of Deputies has passed a bill amendment which should see green cards replace work visas and residence permits for foreign workers as of next year. The amendment was approved on Friday. By issuing green cards, the government is hoping to attract more foreign workers to the Czech Republic - an idea which has been criticised heatedly by the opposition. Opposition deputies were vocal ahead of the reading on Friday, warning of ghettoisation, security and health risks, but the government has argued the Czech economy needs the foreign workforce. According to Labour Ministry statistics, almost 280,000 foreigners currently work legally in the Czech Republic.
The green card is expected to replace the residence permit and work visa for foreign nationals. They will be able to apply only for jobs not filled by Czechs or other EU nationals within 30 days. For it to take effect, the law will now still have to be passed in the Senate and signed by the president.
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08/22/2008
In a speech on Thursday, the US presidential hopeful Barack Obama focused on the 40th anniversary of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. In his speech, Mr Obama commented that the US did not do much to help Czechoslovakia then, but stressed his country did much for the building of a free Europe later. Mr Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, also drew on similarities between the ’68 invasion and the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, saying that the “right to live freely and securely within their borders – a right denied the Czechs and Slovaks 40 years ago needed to apply to all European countries”.
At the same time, Mr Obama made clear that Russia was no longer the Soviet Union of the cold war era, and he stressed that the US had a stake in Russia in forwarding common interests.
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08/22/2008
In related news, the Hungarian Culture Minister Istvan Hiller has apologised on behalf of his government for Hungary's participation in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Mr Hiller said on Thursday that the suppression of the Prague Spring communist-led reform movement 40 years ago was shameful and that Hungary's share of the blame had not been lessened by the fact that it had acted under pressure from the Soviet Union. He called Hungary’s participation “an aggression, an attack on free thinking and on free decision-making”.
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08/22/2008
Czech civil servants are not likely to see the implementation of a bill on the civil service originally planned for next year: on Friday the Chamber of Deputies postponed the date of the bill’s coming into effect until 2012. The government has said it wants to draft new legislation to define civil servants' status. Parliament passed the service law back in April 2002 but its implementation has now been postponed three times. The bill outlines the rights and duties of civil servants, including service bonuses, holiday time and severance pay.
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08/22/2008
The Chamber of Deputies is expected to vote on the government's draft budget for next year in the first week of December, according to a proposed timetable approved by the Chamber of Deputies budget committee. According to the timetable, the lower house should debate the budget bill in its final wording on December 3. Back in June, the government approved the draft 2009 state budget with a deficit of 38.1 billion crowns. Budget spending has been proposed at 1,053 billion, and the deficit set to about 1.5 percent of the GDP. The opposition Social Democrats have criticised the bill, saying it is evidence of the failure of the government's reforms.
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