News

The Interior Ministry has given the Union of Communist Youth until the end of March to change its policy programme. If they do not drop a call for a worker's revolution the group face a ban, on the grounds that they are registered as a civic association not a political party. The young Communists say they have no intention of changing their policies.

The country's health insurers are to stop paying for such things as contraceptive pills and frames for glasses from the beginning of January. Subsidies for visits to swimming pools and saunas will also come to an end, Mlada fronta Dnes reported.

Police fear another Czech businessman, for whom an arrest warrant has been issued, has left the country to avoid prosecution. Tomas Pitr was found guilty of tax evasion last month and was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison. He appealed the verdict. Fearing he would leave the country, Prague's Municipal Court issued a warrant for his arrest last week. In a telephone interview with the internet news server Novinky on Thursday, Mr Pitr said he was on holiday in the Swiss Alps and had yet to decide whether or not he would return to the Czech Republic.

Tomas Pitr is one of the country's richest entrepreneurs. Earlier this year, another Czech millionaire, Radovan Krejcir, who is wanted on charges of fraud and planning the murder of a customs official, escaped to the Seychelles.

Czech wholesalers and retailers have been selling alcohol well below average price. Under Czech law they have until the end of the year to empty their stocks of spirits that are not labelled with a new tax stamps, or else face a heavy fine. Spirits with an alcohol content of 15% or higher have to be properly labelled and have the stamp. As of January 1 2006, any wholesaler or retailer who violates the law can face a fine of up to 5 million Czech crowns (over 200,000 US dollars).