Top Czech News - Prague Daily Monitor

The situation along the rain-swollen Moravian streams is still serious, forcing hundreds of people out of their homes, cutting thousands off heat and energy supplies and making authorities declare the state of danger in six areas in the lower reaches of the Morava river.

The staff of the Czech pavilion at Expo 2010 are among those complaining about the conditions hampering national staffers' work at the world exhibition, and Czech commissioner Pavel Stehlík has depicted the troubles in his letter to the organisers, he said Tuesday.

The Chamber of Deputies Tuesday passed a law regulating the relations between politicians and lobbyists by the votes of the Social Democrats, Communists and the Greens.

The Chamber of Deputies Tuesday passed a government-proposed package of anti-corruption legislation, introducing the institute of chief witness.

The Czech Republic can ensure 5% of radioisotopes used especially for diagnostic purposes to the world medicine, Jozef Kubinyi of Nuclear Medicine Department of Prague's General Teaching Hospital, said Tuesday.

The Czech budget reckons with CZK 100 million allocated to floods and similar crisis situations and the government has another CZK 3.65 billion in the budget reserve, the Finance Ministry said.

The manifestos of Czech political parties which they offer ahead of the May 28-29 general elections are coming close to one another even though the parties conceive their campaigns as an irreconcilable clash of values, authors of a survey told journalists Tuesday.

Czech President Václav Klaus met William Hague, Britain's new Conservative foreign secretary, on the margin of the EU-Latin America summit in Madrid Monday, Klaus's spokesman told the media, adding that Hague assured Klaus that Britain considers the Czech Republic its close partner.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, who started a two-day visit to Armenia Monday, said after a meeting with his counterpart Tigran Sargsyan that there are chances of extending Czech exports to and imports from Armenia regardless of the present difficult period.

The new Czech government will be established rather rapidly, within one to two months, after the late May elections to the Chamber of Deputies, Petr Nečas, election leader of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), said at the financial forum Golden Crown Monday.

The parties are spreading only simple election slogans, arguing that voters do not read their manifestoes anyway, Jiří Sobota and Marek Švehla write in the Respekt weekly.

President Václav Klaus and his Slovak counterpart Ivan Gasparovič Monday paid their last respects to Czech ombudsman Otakar Motejl who died 9 May at the age of 77.

The František Kriegel Prize that the Charter 77 Foundation annually bestows for civic courage was Monday handed to Czech local politician and doctor Alena Dernerová for her fight against corruption.

The government Monday decided that a total of 800 soldiers can be deployed, out of the regular rescue system, to help during current floods at the regions' request, Defence Minister Martin Barták said.

The Chinese would like to buy the Czech pavilion at the Expo world exhibition in Shanghai, Pavel Stehlík, general commissioner of the Czech participation, said Monday.

The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia will cooperate in the rescue operations and the removal of damage during the current floods, the prime ministers of the three countries agreed.

The Czech judiciary system needs to be made more effective but the political parties do not know how to do it, top representatives of the Czech judiciary agreed on the TV discussion programme Questions of Václav Moravec Sunday.

A bronze bust of writer, journalist, politician and exile publisher Pavel Tigrid (1917-2003) was unveiled in Ostrava on Friday.

Irena Moozová Saturday left the post of the head of the European Commission's (EC) mission in the Czech Republic and she will work at the EC directorate for communication in Brussels.

The Prague City Hall lost CZK 43 million as a result of the botched project of Opencard, a chip-card to make various payments easier for Praguers, Czech Television reported Friday, citing an analysis by the Oživení (Revival) civic group.