The Czech Republic and other non-euro zone countries will participate in future euro zone summits, Czech Radio’s flagship station Radiožurnál reported on Saturday, referring to the latest draft of the planned fiscal compact. According to Radiožurnál, states will be eligible providing they sign. Highly-placed sources confirmed that Czech, Polish and Swedish negotiators at a meeting of prime ministers in Brussels had played a key role in pushing through the concession: originally, members of the euro zone had intended to meet on their own. The centre-right Czech government this week approved a 1.5 billion euro loan to the IMF to help contain the debt crisis in the euro zone and gave conditional approval for the Czech Republic to join the emerging fiscal compact – a process that will either have to be ratified by Parliament or in a national referendum.
MP and former head of the Communist Party Miroslav Grebeníček has expressed the suspicion that his party is being spied on by the country’s centre-right government. Mr Grebeníček expressed his concerns in a written message to the prime minister in which he stressed that he had registered information recently that the Interior Ministry and certain intelligence branches had been “tasked” with monitoring his party. He also questioned the prime minister about whether other political parties, including his own right-of-centre Civic Democrats, were being watched. In the Communist MP’s view, such tactics could be pursued to draw public attention away from lobbying, backroom deals and political corruption. Prime Minister Petr Nečas denied the claims outright, stressing in his written reply that intelligence service activities were defined by law; he maintained that no investigation of the Communist Party could be conducted at the behest of the government without lawful reason.
The diary of Michal Kraus (who survived the Holocaust as a boy) was published on Friday on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a boy, Kraus went through Terezín and later the Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps where he lost both parents and he survived two death marches. He wrote his diary shortly after the end of the war but never published it. He had started writing a diary at home, prior to deportation but in Auschwitz it was taken away from him. The diary will be officially presented at the seat of the Prague Jewish Community on February 2.
Mr Kraus´s diary describes the events and relations in the camp and condemns inhuman behaviour of some inmates, the Czech news agency reports. In July 1948, 17-year-old Michal Kraus left Czechoslovakia and moved to Canada with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He took his diary with him and later gave it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Copies of the diary are kept by four museums in the Czech Republic and Israel. Mr Kraus, now 81, decided to publish his diary because of the persecution of ethnic and other minorities, still a problem in the Czech Republic and Europe in general, he said.
A 33-year-old motorist and 29-year-old passenger suffered serious head injuries on Friday night when their car was hit by a transport train near České Budějovice. The accident took place at around 9:30 pm at a railway crossing. A two-year-old in a baby seat in the back of the car was unhurt. Signal lights at the crossing were not in operation, an official from the Railways Inspectorate said. Damage to the train was reported at more than 200,000 crowns, while damage to the car was estimated at 50,000.
A 34-year-old motorist was killed in an accident between the villages of Keblice and Brňany in the Litoměřice area on Saturday. The accident took place at around 9:30 am. The driver lost control of her vehicle which went off the road and hit a tree. Both emergency personnel and fire fighters were called to the scene to try and free her from the car, but were unable to save the woman, a police spokeswoman said.
The winner of the 16th annual dog sled race called Šediváčkův Long, held in the north-eastern Czech Republic, is musher Vít Kolátor. Mr Kolátor won the four-stage race with his eight dogs in 11 hours and 35 minutes. Aleš Pícl came in second, five minutes behind. Almost 100 mushers from eight countries with some 500 dogs competed in the race – considered one of the toughest on the European continent. They had to overcome 240 kilometres in deep snow and freezing conditions in the Orlické mountains in just four days.
The rest of the weekend should see partly cloudy to overcast skies with more snow and day temperatures dropping to minus 3 degrees. Night time lows can reach minus 15, though in some places as much as ten degrees lower.
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