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12/04/2007
One in five Czech companies have been the subject of blackmail, suggests a survey quoted in Hospodarske noviny. However, the newspaper said there was great variety in the forms of blackmail experienced, ranging from excessive pressure from competitors to death threats. Of those firms affected, 15 percent said politicians had attempted to blackmail them. A representative of the Czech branch of Transparency International said companies were reluctant to talk publicly about the issue of blackmail, due to fears about their safety and reputation.
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12/04/2007
The US private equity firm Warburg Pincus has acquired majority ownership of the Czech Republic’s second-biggest internet portal, Centrum.cz. The amount it paid for the website has not been disclosed. Centrum.cz was launched in 1999 as a direct competitor to Seznam.cz, which remains the most used Czech web portal.
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12/04/2007
A labourer died on Tuesday when a concrete panel fell on him and two others during the demolition of a hotel in the mountain resort town of Spindleruv Mlyn. A spokesperson for the local police said the man's whole body had been trapped beneath the panel; he was dead by the time rescue workers arrived on the scene. The two other workers are being treated in hospital for their injuries.
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12/04/2007
Kino Svetozor in the centre of Prague has closed its doors for two months, during which the cinema will be the subject of extensive renovation work. Svetozor was first opened nine decades ago; in recent years it has screened arthouse pictures and taken part in various film festivals.
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12/03/2007
The two baby girls who were accidentally swapped at birth almost a year ago have returned to their biological parents. The parents have originally planned to exchange the babies on New Year’s Day, but psychologists have advised them to do it as soon as possible, as the girls start to be increasingly attached to them. The girls were mixed up by hospital staff soon after their birth on December 9 last year. The parents learnt of the accidental swap in October after one of the fathers secretly ordered a DNA test, fearing that his daughter was not his biological child. When the mother’s subsequent tests came out negative as well, the hospital admitted its mistake.
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12/03/2007
The Green Party have nominated their deputy chairman and member of parliament Ondrej Liska for education minister. The approval of the 30-year-old Liska was preceded by a long and heated debate in the broader leadership of the party. The Greens’ partners in government, the Civic Democrats and the Christian Democrats, have expressed their agreement with the candidacy. President Vaclav Klaus will appoint Mr Liska on Tuesday. Last week he expressed his concerns regarding Mr Liska’s relatively young age.
The search for a new education minister has taken more than two months, since Dana Kuchtova resigned having failed to secure billions of crowns worth of EU funds which had been earmarked for the Czech Republic. The search for her successor has split the Green Party, with some deputies insisting that she should be re-instated.
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12/03/2007
About half of the Czech Republic’s school employees, some 100 000 people, are expected to take part in a strike on Tuesday to demand increased funding for the education sector next year. The unions say three billions crowns is needed for teachers' salaries and training and school equipment. According to union leader Frantisek Dobsik, some 80 % of Czech schools are expected to be closed. The caretaker education minister, Martin Bursik, said after a meeting with union leaders on Saturday that the government would not allocate more money for the education sector despite the strike.
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12/03/2007
A group of Czech exiles considered abducting Edvard Benes from Czechoslovakia after the 1948 communist takeover, the Lidove noviny reported. It said the plan had been dropped due to the poor state of Benes’s health. Former resistance fighter Radomir Luza told the daily that he had proposed the plan to the French military intelligence. Edvard Benes was one of the politicians who contributed to the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Between 1940 and 1945 he was the head of the Czechoslovak exile government seated in London. Mr Benes resigned as president in June 1948.
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12/03/2007
Prefabricated blocks of flats from the housing estates inhabited largely by Czech Romanies may be renovated, using the funds from an EU operational programme, according to the government council for the Romany community. The project managed by the Local Development Ministry should take place between 2007 and 2013 in five localities with over 20,000 residents.
In related news, a new agency was set up to battle social exclusion and to improve housing conditions of Romanies. As of January 2008, the agency will conduct pilot projects in 12 Czech ghettos. It will aim to establish cooperation between authorities, NGOs and residents of the localities. There are currently over 300 ghettos in the country, mostly inhabited by Romanies, with as many as 80,000 people living in them.
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12/03/2007
Number of Czech households with Internet access has increased by six percent since last year to 35%, but the Czech Republic is still lagging behind the EU average. According to a new survey conducted by Eurostat in 27 European countries, the number of EU household with access to Internet increased from 49 % last year to 54 % at the beginning of 2007. The Czech Republic is followed by Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania.
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