Prague - Jaroslav Kopriva, recently sacked as deputy defence minister, says that another former deputy minister, Martin Bartak, was behind the overpriced purchase of APCs by the Czech military, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.

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.

Prague - Czech Greenpeace activists started collecting signatures on a petition demanding that the hazardous bisphenol-A (BPS) content be banned in materials for baby bottles, outside the Health Ministry in Prague centre today.

Prague - Former Czech deputy defence minister Jaroslav Kopriva, who was sacked over planned abuse of a state order, reckoned with his possible departure and he was preparing a way to keep controlling the arms deals, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.

Prague - Czech journalists´ recent uncovering of "a bribery mechanism of sponging on state orders" may cause a twist in the fight against corruption in the country, Martin Komarek writes in the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) today.

Prague - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas today agreed with the resignation of government human rights commissioner Michael Kocab, government spokesman Martin Kubka has told CTK.

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he can see no reason for the existence of Czech embassies in a number of small EU countries, saying the Union is no longer foreign in the standard sense of the word, at a meeting with Czech ambassadors today.

Prague - Slovak politicians and policemen only unwillingly admitted on Monday that the victims of the shooting massacre in Bratislava were Romanies because they quite rightfully feared the reaction of both the majority and the minority part of society, Martin Ehl writes in Hospodarske noviny today.

Prague - Czech Deputy Defence Minister Jaroslav Kopriva (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) was negotiating a kickback for an order worth hundreds of millions of crowns, iDnes.cz server wrote on Tuesday, adding that daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) was monitoring his meetings for several months.

Bratislava - Slovakia will pay respect to the victims of the Monday incident in which a gunman killed seven people with the day of national mourning on Thursday, the government said today.

Bratislava - The gunman who killed seven people in Bratislava on Monday, was fatally wounded by a police bullet before shooting himself dead with a legally held gun, Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic told journalists today, referring to the results of autopsy.

Prague - The Czech Republic will seek money from the EU Solidarity Fund to cover the damage caused by recent floods, and it plans to discuss coordination of its request with Saxony and Poland, Prime Minister Petr Necas told journalists today.

Prague - It is a bad thing if Prime Minister Petr Necas and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg argue publicly whether the French expulsion of Romanies was racist or not, Adam Cerny writes in Hospodarske noviny.

Prague - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas today sharply protested against a number of EU countries, including the Czech Republic, not being invited to the ministerial meeting in Paris that is to discuss the transfer of Bulgarian and Romanian Romanies from France.

Prague - People employed at health care facilities and schools will join the September 21 demonstration of Czech policemen and firefighters against the wage cuts and changes in the Labour Code that the government plans within its austerity measures, union leader Alena Vondrova said.

Bratislava - An unknown man opened fire in a Bratislava street today, killing at least six people and wounding 13 before reportedly committing suicide, medical rescue service spokeswoman Dominika Sulkova told CTK.

Olomouc - The High Court in Olomouc today lowered fugitive businessman Radovan Krejcir´s sentence for a fraud with shares from 6.5 to six years in prison.

Prague - Prime Minister Petr Necas poses the biggest problem of the coalition government, Bohumil Dolezal writes in Lidove noviny, summing up the situation three months after the elections to the Chamber of Deputies that catapulted to power a three-party center-right coalition.

Prague - The view of Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a racist is rather disputable in itself, Daniel Kaiser writes in Lidove noviny.

Prague - Former Czech PM Mirek Topolanek would like to occupy a leading post in an organisation "with a larger than European scope of work," and he is negotiating with diplomats and politicians about it, he said in an interview for today´s issue of the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD).

Prague - Karel Skrabal calls on the Czech Christian Democratic Union-People´s Party (KDU-CSL) to either dissolve itself or find a real leader in the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) today.

Prague/Johannesburg - Fugitive Czech businessman Radovan Krejcir can be neither arrested in South Africa nor deported and extradited to another country until the final decision on his request for political asylum is made, the High Court in Johannesburg ruled on Friday, Pravo writes today.

Prague - The Czech Defence Ministry will cancel 350 vacant jobs for soldiers and will sack 700 civilian employees by the end of the year, daily E15 writes today about the planned cuts in the military budget.

Prague - There is no precise answer to the question what is the adequate number of embassies and government chateaux for a country like the Czech Republic, Zbynek Petracek writes in the daily Lidove noviny today in reaction to the government´s plan to close five embassies.

Prague - The Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) offered to its former leader Jiri Paroubek the post of Czech ambassador to Austria but Paroubek rejected it, the news server iDnes writes today.

Prague - The Czech government today decided to abolish the embassies in the Congo, Venezuela, Kenya, Yemen and Costa Rica within the Foreign Ministry's planned budget savings.

Prague - Czech senior politicians may squabble, but not before foreign eyes, Daniel Anyz writes about the ongoing disputes between the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and TOP 09 on foreign political issues inside the government in Hospodarske noviny.

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus has proposed former South Bohemia regional governor Jan Zahradnik (Civic Democrats, ODS) and again civic activist John Bok for ombudsman ahead of the second election.

Brasilia - Brazil has shipped a container with 22 tonnes of illegal contaminated waste, which allegedly comes from the Czech Republic, back to Germany from where it was dispatched, the AFP French news agency has reported.

Prague - The list of planned budget cuts that Interior Minister Radek John presented to reporters today indirectly showed that bureaucracy has been swelling at the ministry and that the state has lived beyond its means, which is no longer acceptable, daily Hospodarske noviny writes today.

Prague - Czech Social Democrat (CSSD) regional governor of South Moravia Michal Hasek today called David Rath, regional governor of Central Bohemia, a self-styled "Kraken," in a press release sent to CTK.

Prague - The Czech police are investigating other cases of fraudulent machinations with carbon credits that might deprive the state of almost one billion crowns in tax evasion, the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) reports today.

Prague - It is good that the new Czech government plans a thorough reform of the labour code, but it would not be good if the reform excessively harmed employees, Jiri Leschtina writes in daily Hospodarske noviny today.

Prague - Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) today confirmed that the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) head Ivan Hodac ranks among the three most serious candidates for the post of Czech state secretary for the EU.

Prague - Czech Senate chairman Premysl Sobotka condemned the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops on August 21, 1968 as shameful at a commemorative meeting outside the Czech Radio building today, and praised then radio reporters for providing true information to people.

Prague - It seems that the new Czech cabinet might really take steps to tackle the country´s swelling bureaucracy, but it should narrow the range of the tasks the state is supposed to fulfil instead of merely reducing state bodies´ budgets, daily Mlada fronta Dnes writes today.

Prague - The Prague town reserve, UNESCO-listed since 1992, includes the Pruhonice park on the city´s outskirts Czech Culture Ministry official Zdenek Novak has told Czech Radio, referring to the UNESCO committee´s decision at its recent meeting in Brazil.

Prague - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas pronounced politically the sole possible stand when he said in Berlin on Thursday that his Bavarian colleague Horst Seehofer should better stay at home if he wanted to deal with Benes decrees during his planned autumn visit to Prague, Daniel Kaiser writes in daily Lidove noviny today.

Berlin - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas does not want to question the post-war Benes decrees and he is of the view that Czech-German relations must look towards the future, he told reporters during his visit to Berlin today.

Prague - The Czech police deal with the case of Frantisek Hezoucky, former director of the Temelin nuclear power plant, who recently entered the plant complex with a part of a nuclear fuel assembly in his bag at variance with safety directives, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.

Prague - The future seems to belong to flexible entities working with marketing, the Internet and new technologies, such as Apple iPad, which former Social Democrat (CSSD) chairman Jiri Paroubek owns, he told Czech Television recently, Josef Mlejnek Jr writes in Lidove noviny today.

Prague - The Czech military will deploy the first four Pandur armoured personnel carriers (APC) in the foreign mission in Afghanistan this autumn, General Staff spokeswoman Jana Ruzickova has told CTK.

Prague - The Czech cabinet today approved a draft amendment to the law on foreigners´ stay that introduces residence permits with biometric data and employers´ co-responsibility for foreign employees, a participant in the cabinet meeting told CTK.

Prague - The Czech police and customs officers detained 21 Vietnamese on suspicion of growing and distribution of marijuana, most of which they smuggled abroad, the customs and police drug units´ heads, Pavel Hoffman and Jakub Frydrych, told journalists today.

Prague - Czech employees were the shortest time on sick leave in the past half a century in 2009, being four days officially ill on average, according to the latest data from the Czech Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS).

Prague - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) has the right to his own adviser, though a controversial one, Daniel Kaiser writes in the daily Lidove noviny (LN) today.

Prague - The Prague City Hall today supported the controversial plan to build a camp for homeless people and introduce their registry, councillor Jiri Janecek (Civic Democrats, ODS) told journalists.

Brno - Ludvik Kundera, Czech author and translator linked with modern art streams such as surrealism, died today at the age of 90, Czech Television reported.