Current Affairs | All stories

The Czech Republic has come in for some criticism in Amnesty International’s latest annual report on the human rights situation around the world. Not for the first time, the organisation highlights the fact that many Czech Roma children are being sent to schools for children with mental disabilities. The report also points to shortcomings in the country’s treatment of refugees and migrants. I began with that particular aspect when I called the spokeswoman for the Czech branch of Amnesty, Martina Pařízková.

Eight years and six months was the sentence handed down to the head of the Czech Republic’s independent energy regulator for her part in a solar power scam costing billions of crowns. The feisty Alena Vitásková maintains her innocence and says she stay on in office and fight to clear her name.

Scientists from Brno’s Masaryk University, back from James Ross Island, have revealed their automated weather station registered a record temperature of 17.8 degrees Celsius in the Antarctic last March. While the findings still have to be officially confirmed, the researchers already say it is further evidence of the impact of global warming.

Defence Minister Martin Stropnický has said that the Czech Republic could send up to 100 soldiers to serve with NATO forces in eastern member states. Speaking on a TV discussion programme, he made clear that if preparations went according to plan, the Czechs could be sent in the second half of 2016.

Smaller unions at one of the Czech Republic’s biggest employers, the state controlled Czech post office today staged a demonstration in the capital. They aimed to highlight what they claim are scandalous working conditions and management practices.

Another group of Christian refugees from Iraq is set to arrive at Prague’s Václav Havel Airport on Friday. The families are part of a larger group whose relocation has been initiated and financed by the foundation Generace 21. This time, however, the refugees’ arrival has caused a wave of protests. Inhabitants of a small village in north Moravia where some of the families are to settle have launched a petition against them.

A breakthrough of sorts has occurred in the ownership tussle over millions of litres of fuel stocked by the Czech state strategic reserves authority in Germany. But the go ahead to ship the contested fuel back to the Czech Republic is now causing headaches on its own.

Czech and Polish ministers of the environment met on Thursday with the Czech side having a lengthy list of issues to discuss. High up on that list were Polish plans to explore for uranium and continue the development of a massive brown coal lignite mine just across the frontier.

The Czech government has definitively called an end to negotiations with the ailing mining company OKD. Industry and Trade Minister Jan Mládek on Wednesday advised the company to file for bankruptcy and said the government would now focus exclusively on helping the thousands of employees to be laid-off.

The attention of Europe will be on Brussels on Thursday when EU leaders meet to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership. However, while the likes of Germany and France are keen to cut a deal and help prevent a possible British exit from the EU, the Czech Republic and the other Visegrad Four states are refusing to accept certain provisions.