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President Vaclav Klaus granted five presidential pardons on Wednesday, the first time he has done so since he first took office in March. President Klaus's spokesman said they were cases where suspended prison sentences had been imposed or applicants were suffering serious health conditions, or a combination of both. He would not specify any other details on Thursday. The Presidential Office says it has received some 900 pardon applications since March. Mr Klaus' predecessor Vaclav Havel was often criticised for dispensing controversial pardons. Mr Havel's office made public detailed information on every pardon dispensed. Mr Klaus said shortly after his election in late February that he would only grant pardons in exceptional cases.

The Czech Confederation of Trade Unions (CMKOS) has called onto the government to stop the privatisation process of the Severoceske Doli coal mining company in North Bohemia. Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, the confederation's President Milan Stech said trade unions opposed the way the government had been conduction the public tender for the privatisation and view the process as damaging to future regional development and stable employment. He added that the country's biggest power utility CEZ should also not have been excluded from the sale. The government's privatisation of coal mines was criticised by the European Commission for similar reasons last month.

Some eighty ethnic Germans who have been living in the country all their lives and were not among those expelled from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, will be spending three weeks in a spa as symbolic compensation for the repression they faced after the war. According to Alena Einhornova from the Czech-German Fund for the Future, thanks to which the 1.8 million crown spa project will come to being, the ethnic Germans suffered much discrimination despite them being Czech citizens who never had a fascist history.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday he hoped the proposed European Union constitution would not be accepted. Mr Klaus was speaking to journalists after a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla who was at Prague castle to inform Mr Klaus about the government's position on the matter. Mr Klaus reiterated that the constitution could threaten the sovereignty of the Czech Republic, which will join the EU with nine other countries in May. A Czech delegation is leaving for Brussels this week to take part in an EU summit aimed at finishing talks on the EU document.