• 11/16/2003

    Residents of three South Bohemian villages are taking part in the country's first ever referendum on nuclear waste. The people of Nadejkov, Bozetice, and Prestenice are being asked to vote on a government proposal to build an underground nuclear waste storage facility in the area. Similar referendums are planned in five other villages in areas also considered as potential sites. At present, waste from the country's two nuclear power plants at Temelin and Dukovany is stored at the plants themselves.

    Author: Rob Cameron
  • 11/16/2003

    A record low turnout has accompanied this weekend's second round of the Senate by-election in Brno. Just over 10 percent turned out to vote in the final round, electing Karel Jarusek, a member of the main opposition Civic Democrats, as the city's new senator. In the end Mr Jarusek won by just 21 votes. Saturday's turnout was the lowest ever in any election to the Senate, which suffers from a lack of public trust.

    Author: Rob Cameron
  • 11/16/2003

    The Czech football team has beaten Canada 5-1 in a friendly in the North Bohemian town of Teplice. Goals by Jankulovski, Poborsky, Heinz, Sionko and Skacel steered the Czechs to an easy victory before the start of the winter break. The Czech Republic haven't been beaten in the last 19 matches - a new record for Czech football.

    Author: Rob Cameron
  • 11/15/2003

    Police have arrested two Slovak men as they attempted to sell a large amount of radioactive material in a Brno hotel. The two, from the Slovak town of Presov, were detained in a sting operation at Brno's Voronez hotel while trying to sell three kilograms of the material, which has not yet been identified. The National Institute for Nuclear Safety says it was the largest seizure of radioactive material anywhere in the world for the last nine months. The head of the Institute, Dana Drabova, said it was almost certain that the material could not have been used for the production of nuclear weapons. She said the material was most probably low-grade uranium smuggled from the former Soviet bloc.

    Author: Rob Cameron
  • 11/15/2003

    A record low turnout has accompanied this weekend's second round of the Senate by-election in Brno. Just over 10 percent turned out to vote in the final round, electing Karel Jarusek, a member of the main opposition Civic Democrats, as the city's new senator. In the end Mr Jarusek won by just 21 votes. Saturday's turnout was the lowest ever in any election to the Senate, which suffers from a lack of public trust.

    Author: Rob Cameron
  • 11/12/2003

    After police found a bugging device in the car of Social Democrat MP Josef Hojdar on Monday, Mr Hojdar called on Prime Minister Spidla and the ministers of the interior, justice and defence to look into the matter. The Czech counter-intelligence service, the BIS, has meanwhile denied playing any role in the matter. Mr Hojdar made the headlines earlier this year when he temporarily left the governing Social Democrats' group in the Chamber of Deputies, threatening the government's majority. Claims the MP made in the summer that he had been bugged and followed were not proven.

    Author: Jan Velinger
  • 11/12/2003

    Meanwhile, Jan Klas, the chairman of a watchdog commission overseeing the counter-intelligence service, the BIS, has responded to the Hojdar case by saying Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla bore responsibility for recent problems related to bugging and wiretapping in the Czech Republic. Speaking to the Czech news agency CTK Mr Klas said that the prime minister had helped create an atmosphere in which it was "not possible to trust anyone", pointing out that Mr Spidla regularly visited BIS offices to check wiretap reports. The Social Democrats' deputies group has called for an inquiry into the Hojdar case by Mr Klas' commission, the prime minister and ministers of interior, justice and defence, as well as the lower house's commission for military counter-intelligence service and police wiretapping supervision. Mr Klas, however, opposes the involvement of parliamentary bodies, saying they would "divert the problem from relevant institutions".

    Author: Jan Velinger
  • 11/12/2003

    Both Interior Minister Stanislav Gross and Defence Minister Miroslav Kostelka have already appeared before the parliamentary commission to explain that neither the police nor military secret intelligence played any role in the bugging of MP Jaroslav Hojdar's car. Late Wednesday both men confirmed that the type of bugging device that had been found was not used by either service.

    Author: Jan Velinger
  • 11/12/2003

    The country's chief state prosecutor Marie Benesova has ruled that former communist functionaries Milous Jakes and Jozef Lenart will no longer be tried for their roles during the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. Both men had been tried on charges of treason for allegedly trying to legalise the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw pact troops on August 21st, 1968. Mrs Benesova's decision upholds an appeals court ruling from June that found neither man guilty as charged. Had she questioned the court's decision the Supreme Court would have been petitioned and the trials could have continued.

    Author: Jan Velinger
  • 11/12/2003

    Spokeswoman Anna Veverkova has revealed that the Czech cabinet has swept aside an opposition proposal calling for compensation for victims of the

    Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The proposal, put forward by the opposition Civic Democrats, will still, however, be debated in parliament. The Civic Democrats would like to see those who suffered under the occupation, which effectively lasted from 1968 till 1991, receive remuneration as high as millions of crowns, especially in cases where a family member was wounded, raped, or killed. To this day the complete number of victims who suffered or were killed under the occupation remains unknown.

    Author: Jan Velinger

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