Czech Republic

ČTK

The posts of members of towns and villages' assemblies will be sought by candidates from 111 parties and movements, 20 more than four years ago, in October, according to the information published by the Czech Statistical Office Thursday.

ČTK

The leaders of the government party TOP 09, Karel Schwarzenberg and Miroslav Kalousek, should "properly explain" the latest scandal involving former deputy defence minister Jaroslav Kopřiva and shoulder responsibility for his activities, opposition Social Democrats said Thursday.

ČTK

President Václav Klaus will go to the United States in late September and he is to give a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, his spokesman Radim Ochvat confirmed to ČTK Thursday.

ČTK

Karel Srba, former Foreign Ministry secretary who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for plotting a contract murder of a journalist, has been released on parole after eight years behind bars.

ČTK

Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek (TOP 09) Thursday dismissed Prime Minister Petr Nečas's statement that corruption at the Defence Ministry had appeared in the mid-1990s when Kalousek was deputy defence minister.

ČTK

The EIA study assessing the impact of the Temelín nuclear power plant's planned two new units suffers from serious shortcomings and should be completed, representatives of four environmental organisations said Thursday.

ČTK

The number of insolvency petitions filed in the first eight months this year totalled 9,908, which is 416 more than in 2009 due to an increase in insolvency petitions filed against individuals, the company Creditreform told ČTK Thursday.

Prague - Why should actually anyone worry about an extra-parliamentary party that only has a couple of strongholds left in southern Moravia? Stanislav Balik writes about the prospects of Christian Democrats, untily recently a mainstream party, who failed to cross the five-percent threshold to get into the Chamber of Deputies in the May elections, in Lidove noviny.

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus will go to the United States in late September and he is to give a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, his spokesman Radim Ochvat confirmed to CTK today.

Plzen - Karel Srba, former Czech Foreign Ministry secretary who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for plotting a contract murder of a journalist, will be released on parole after eight years behind bars, a court in Plzen ruled today.