News

The number of people to die in road accidents in the Czech Republic in July so far has been 88, down from 117 in the same period last year. The number of accidents has fallen as well, from 15,316 in July 2007 to 12,230 this year. Police said that the biggest causes of accidents in the last month had been reckless driving and speeding.

The number of people identified as HIV positive in the Czech Republic continues to grow, according to the National Reference Laboratory for AIDS. Between the start of the year and the end of June, 78 new cases were recorded – 21 more than in the same period in 2007. Almost a thousand people were registered as HIV positive at the end of last month, said a spokesperson for the national AIDS centre. Experts say the actual number infected could be up to 10 times higher. Over half of those identified as suffering from the disease live in Prague.

The Czech broadcasting council has fined the commercial station TV Nova CZK 1,000,000 (around USD 65,000) for showing particularly raw images of the remains of a murder victim in an afternoon news broadcast in January. The victim’s killer had cut up her body and buried it in the grounds of a school in north Bohemia. Nova broadcast pictures of the body parts following their discovery and described the killing in some detail. The broadcasting council said both the video and the descriptions could have been harmful to young people.

Former prime minister Miloš Zeman may be about to come out of retirement and re-enter politics, following the official registration of The Friends of Miloš Zeman Civic Association with the Interior Ministry last week. The organisation’s spokesman Miroslav Grégr – who served as industry minister in a Social Democrat government headed by Mr Zeman – told the newspaper Právo on Wednesday that it would formulate a manifesto at a meeting in Prague next week. Mr Grégr said the group, which may attract up to 500 members, now needed to create a functioning organizational network. The Friends of Miloš Zeman are due to hold their first public events after the summer holidays. Mr Zeman was prime minister for four years at the turn of the decade and failed in a bid to become president in 2003. He quit the Social Democrats last year due to differences with current leader Jiří Paroubek.