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The Czech environment minister, Civic Democrat Pavel Drobil, has announced his resignation over a corruption scandal at the ministry. Mr Drobil’s decision came hours after the daily Mladá fronta Dnes exposed practices aimed at channelling money from the ministry-controlled State Environmental Fund.

Unusually cold weather has claimed 13 lives in Prague since October – 11 of them in December alone. A combination of hypothermia and alcohol played a role. With severe conditions expected to continue, the question now is how quickly help for the city’s homeless can be provided to try and stop what should be preventable deaths.

Six post-communist EU members, including the Czech Republic have urged Brussels to push for an EU ban on denial of communist crimes. In a joint appeal sent to the EU’s justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, they argue that the principle of justice should assure the same approach to all totalitarian regimes. Holocaust denial is already banned in many EU states and the six nations petitioning the EU justice commissioner would like to see similar treatment applied to the crimes of communism.

A new poll commissioned by the Czech Finance Ministry and the central bank showed that most Czechs lack basic financial knowledge, and do not understand some of the fundamental principles of borrowing. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has described the results were “shocking”, and said he would push for more financial education at Czech schools.

Cards featuring the work of Josef Lada are an integral part of Czech Christmas. Lada is best known internationally for illustrations of the Good Soldier Švejk, but his simply drawn carol singers, snow covered villages and nativity scenes are just as popular in his native country. His grandson, also named Josef Lada, says the artist's images capture something everyone can relate to.

The Czech Bank Card Association has warned ATM card users that fraudsters in Prague have come up with a new method of ripping-off bank accounts: it has come to the light that there were several incidents in the capital in November when a taxi driver quietly switched a customer’s bank card he had been handed, for someone else’s, later making a withdrawal. It is unclear how many times the scenario was repeated but at least one such case is now under investigation by the police.

A Czech married couple from a sleepy town in south Bohemia have turned out to be a pair of wanted bank robbers in neighbouring Germany. The pair are suspected of having robbed 20 bank outlets over the last 15 years, getting away with a total of around two million euros. On Friday, however, their luck ran out. The man died in a shoot-out with police in the German town of Karlsruhe, while the woman killed herself after seeing her accomplice killed by police bullets.

Public Affairs – the junior partner in the government coalition – held a policy conference at the weekend seen largely as a litmus test on the party’s future direction. After rising to the forefront of Czech politics in May, the party lost much of its lustre almost as quickly, finding all too little room to manoeuvre next to its right-of-centre partners. At the weekend, party members, including leader Radek John, pledged to push more strongly their top priorities such as their anti-corruption package or a new softer approach on a number of previously

A new survey commissioned by the Czech Interior Ministry has revealed that more than 80 percent of Czechs see Romanies as “inadaptable”. The poll also suggests that around 10 percent of the country’s majority population identify with an extreme right agenda.

The eyes of the world were on Oslo today, where for the first time in more than 70 years the winner of this year’s Nobel peace prize was noticeably absent. Despite international efforts to get him released, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo remains in jail in north-east China, his wife is under house arrest and the Chinese government has used all the clout it has to prevent as many countries as possible attending Friday’s award ceremony. Around the world, on Human Rights Day, people expressed support for the jailed Nobel peace prize winner who is serving