• 07/28/2007

    Around eight hundred right-wing extremists held a demonstration in the central-Bohemian town of Vlasim on Saturday. The radical "National Corporatism" movement organised a so-called "Race Day" in Vlasim to draw attention to what it says is the criminality of the town's Roma inhabitants. Several civic groups have criticised the decision of the town's authorities to permit the demonstration to be staged. The municipality says it had no choice but to allow the event because the organisers had observed all the proper formalities for holding it. Nevertheless, the demonstration was closely monitored by town police and three neo-Nazis were arrested following a clash with people holding a small counter protest.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek has said that former Czech foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier is not the only candidate his party is considering for next year's presidential elections. Mr Paroubek was responding on Saturday to speculation in the media that Mr Dienstbier was the most likely opponent of current incumbent Vaclav Klaus during the presidential election in early 2008.

    The Czech president is elected by both houses of parliament. Mr Klaus's Civic Democrats are the strongest party in both houses but he would still need the support of at least 19 MPs to be re-elected. The Social Democrats are currently in negotiations with the Communists, the Greens and the Christian Democrats about fielding a possible joint candidate to stand against Mr Klaus.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    Zuzana Paroubkova, the wife of former prime minister and Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek has announced that she is going to remain as a member of the Social Democrat Party after all. She had earlier told a tabloid newspaper that she was going to leave the party because she was afraid her political affiliation would affect her charity work for children's homes. Nevertheless, she reversed her decision following talks with her husband. The couple recently announced that they were going to divorce after Mr Paroubek publicly admitted that he was having an affair with his translator Petra Kovacova, who is twenty years younger than him.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek told reporters on Saturday that his party plans to file a libel suit against lawyer Zdenek Altner and to also lodge a complaint against him with the Czech Bar Association. Mr Paroubek said the move was in reaction to Mr Altner's claims in the media that the party was trying to destroy him and had blackmailed him.

    Mr Altner has been suing the Social Democrats for billions of Czech crowns, which he says is owed to him for representing the Social Democrats in a dispute over the ownership of the party's Prague headquarters in 2000.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    The government spokesman for communications on missile defence Tomas Klvana has admitted that mistakes were made by the government in communicating with people on the proposed building of a US radar base in the Czech Republic. Speaking at a stormy public debate in the village of Misov in west Bohemia, where the projected base would be situated, Mr Klvana said he would be holding public meetings in several towns in the region to promote constructive debate on the issue.

    The US radar base in the Czech Republic is intended to be used as part of a missile defence shield against possible attacks from so-called rogue states like Iran. Opinion polls have shown that as many as two thirds of Czechs are against building the base in this country even though the idea has been supported by most of the parties in the centre-right coalition government.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    Two people were killed and three were severely injured after part of an unused shed collapsed in an industrial estate in the central Bohemian town of Kladno on Saturday morning. It is believed that the victims were unemployed Romanies who were illegally dismantling the shed for scrap iron and steel when part of the building collapsed. The injured people were taken to the local hospital, where a doctor later told journalists that they were out of immediate danger. The town authorities will make a decision about what to do with the shed on Monday.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    The Czech minister for human rights and minorities Dzamila Stehliova has announced that a study of Roma unemployment will be launched in the spring of next year. Czech experts and specialists from the World Bank will participate in the study, which is intended to analyse Roma unemployment in the Czech Republic in comparison with other countries that have Roma minorities. It should also come up with strategic measures and recommendations for improving the situation in areas where Roma unemployment is excessively high.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/28/2007

    Czech daily Lidove noviny has reported that, in relative terms, more people in the Czech Republic die from drowning than in other countries. Around three hundred people die from drowning in the Czech Republic, which is a higher number per capita than countries like the USA, England and Australia. The paper quotes a water safety official who blames the unusually high number of drowning fatalities on a lack of discipline and irresponsible swimming habits among Czech swimmers. He also says Czech drowning rates are particularly bad for a land-locked country.

    Author: Coilin O'Connor
  • 07/27/2007

    In a new report the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticises what it calls the continuing covert segregation of Romanies in the Czech education system, as well as the failure to compensate women who had been illegally sterilised. The UN report also denounces the use of caged beds in Czech psychiatric hospitals, and calls for the establishment of an independent body to investigate complaints against the police.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 07/27/2007

    The European Commission has formally accepted a Czech national plan to draw on EU funds in the period 2007 to 2013. Friday's agreement brings to an end months of negotiations. However, the actual drawing of EU money requires European Commission approval of 24 individual Czech programmes focused on various sectors; that process should begin at the end of September and come to a conclusion next year.

    Speaking in Brussels on Friday, the Czech minister for regional development, Jiri Cunek, said the country could already be making use of the EU funding, if it had not been for delays caused by the previous government and the stalemate which followed elections last June.

    Author: Ian Willoughby

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