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The ruling Civic Democrats are facing opposition from their coalition partners to some aspects of the health care reform introduced at the start of this year. Olga Zubová, an MP for the Green Party, says she is considering tabling a proposal according to which children should be exempted from having to pay direct fees for medical services which are now compulsory for all citizens. The Christian Democrats, also a member of the governing coalition, are preparing a similar proposal concerning mothers and newborns. Unlike the opposition Social Democrats who want to see direct payments abolished, the smaller governing parties say they merely want the law modified. Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, of the Civic Democrats, recently admitted that children and pensioners might be exempted from the payments.

The police on Tuesday detained two youths, aged 15 and 13, who are believed to be responsible for a series of attacks against lone women in the vicinity of Ostrava. The two youths are believed to have attacked at least twelve elderly women during which they robbed their victims and inflicted some degree of bodily harm. One woman was reportedly dragged down a flight of stairs and kicked all over her body by both boys because she refused to let go of her handbag. The two boys are from socially-weak, single-parent families. The fifteen year old is being investigated in custody, the younger boy has been released because at age 13 he is not criminally responsible, but he may have to spend time in a correctional institution for adolescents.

The Czech Ministry of Defence has been ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 crowns (around 1800 USD) by the country’s Anti-Monopoly Authority. The fine relates to the avoidance of a mandatory public tender in which the rules were bypassed by breaking down a building contract into two separate smaller entities. Specifically, the fine relates to building work undertaken at a military facility in the region of Hradiště v Doupovských horách in 2005. The verdict by the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition, allows the Ministry of Defence to appeal in the courts.

Members of the Ne Základnam or No to Radars campaign undertook a publicity stunt today to highlight the fact that public money is being used to promote the proposed US military system being located on Czech soil. The protesters handed out symbolic bills to individual government ministers for 882,000 crowns. These bills are said to represent the average amount that each minister has spent of an estimated 15 million crowns of public money to promote the US radar base. The campaigners plan to hold a march through Prague on the 15 March. Opinion polls consistently indicate that a majority of Czechs appose the Bush administration’s plan to locate an anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic