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PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, a big U.S. ally in central Europe, accused Washington of torturing prisoners after a U.S. report criticized the Czech Republic's human rights record, a newspaper said on Thursday. Topolanek, who has supported U.S. plans to site part of a missile shield in the Czech Republic, sharply reacted to a U.S. State Department report that criticized his country over law enforcement, judicial corruption and policy towards minorities. "To the report from the U.S. State Department I can only say that a country that allows torturing of prisoners can hardly teach me about how...

(IsraelNN.com) The Czech Federation of Jewish Communities has filed a legal complaint against a march of neo-Nazis on the Sabbath in the city of Plzen. The complaint includes charges that marchers demonstrated Nazi salutes outside a synagogue and chanted anti-Semitic slogans, such as "Jews to gas." Police did not intervene despite being told of the incidents, and city officials said they permitted the march because there had not been any history of such behavior.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Visiting Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek on Friday urged NATO countries to play a larger role in routing insurgents from Afghanistan, noting his nation is doubling its troop deployment this year. "Like Canada, we're calling upon other countries to take their share of responsibility and to participate even more visibly in peacekeeping and peace-building in Afghanistan," Topolanek said following meetings with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several Canadian ministers. He also indicated that the Czech Republic will double its number of soldiers taking part in the US-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan this year to about...

U.S., Czech Republic close to signing deal on radar - Bush 21:45 | 27/ 02/ 2008 WASHINGTON, February 27 (RIA Novosti) - The United States and the Czech Republic are close to signing a deal on a radar placement as part of the U.S. missile shield plans for Central Europe, the American president said on Wednesday. President George Bush held talks on Wednesday with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek on the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland. The leaders said they are close to signing a deal, but neither gave any details of a...

Prague- Czech President Vaclav Klaus is concerned about the development in Kosovo, which declared its independence of Serbia on Sunday, Klaus writes on his website today in reaction to a letter by Communist (KSCM) leader Vojtech Filip. Klaus writes he understands the frustration and disillusionment of Serbs and that is he concerned about the impacts that Kosovo's declaration of independence can have on other countries both in Europe and in the world. The position of the Czech Republic must not sharpen the already tense situation in the area, Klaus writes. "Our reaction must be formulated and timed in such a...

Police in the Czech republic are trying to find out who stole a 4 tonne railway bridge from the border town of Cheb. The company which was responsible for looking after the bridge raised the alarm when, ever alert, they noticed that the bridge wasn't there any more. The bridge was on a disused stretch of line just outside Cheb. Martina Hruskova, a spokeswoman for the Czech police, commented to AFP: 'We are not sure if it was taken for personal use or for its scrap value.' Exactly what that 'personal use' might be was left unsaid. 'It is the...

Prague - Czech lawmakers failed to elect a new president Friday and suspended their meeting without announcing the results of a second ballot. Neither incumbent Vaclav Klaus or opponent Jan Svejnar emerged victorious from an earlier first round of voting, as they did not receive a required majority in each of the two houses of parliament. Klaus received 47 votes in the Senate and 92 in the lower house, while his underdog challenger, US-Czech economist Svejnar, was backed by 32 senators and 106 members of the lower house. Lawmakers then proceeded with a second round of voting. But the session...

Czech officials urge business deals in missile shield project by Staff Writers Prague (AFP) Jan 16, 2008 Czech officials on Wednesday called for their country to benefit from specific industrial spin-offs if a US defensive missile shield is to be sited in the Czech Republic. "This is not only a strategic alliance, it is not only a military alliance but it is also a business alliance that we want to promote," Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Tomas Pojar told a meeting that is to lay the ground for a cooperation agreement. Czech Deputy Defence Minister Martin Bartak told the two-day missile...

Czechs brew a kosher beer tradition 23.11.2007 - Ruth Frankova When the famous Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal wrote about the Nymburk brewery in his novel "Cutting It Short", he probably didn't expect that one day its beer would make it as far as the Caribbean. Now, beer from the Czech town is also heading for another market. One of its products, which recently received a kosher certificate, will now be sold in Israel. The new Nitro beer is a rather strong lager with 5.5% alcohol. This year, the Nymburk brewery produced three hundred hectolitres of the foamy kosher beverage. If...

The Czech Republic supports Turkey's efforts to acquire full-fledged membership in the European Union, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said after meeting his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Prague on Thursday. "The Czech Republic has been a supporter of Turkey's effort to join the European Union for a long time," Topolanek said at a press conference. Topolanek said that regardless of the difficulties on both sides, he considered the rapprochement of the two civilizations the only possible solution. No other form, such as the privileged partnership, can replace full-fledged membership of the EU, he said. "We are aware of...

Czech military monitored Iranian plane - press Prague- The Czech military, including the Gripen fighters, on Thursday monitored an Iranian transport plane crossing Czech territory as it was to have radioactive material aboard, according to U.S. sources, the daily Pravo reported. Czech Defence Ministry spokesman Andrej Cirtek said it was not a traditional escort when soldiers establish a contact with the plane, but only "shadowing." Pravo writes that the Czech military was on top alert. U.S. colleagues informed the Czech military intelligence service that there was radioactive material aboard the Iranian plane, Pravo says. Consequently, the aircraft was constantly watching...

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel for her efforts to fight climate change, saying politicians, journalists and scientists are exploiting an unproven issue for their own advantage. Klaus said many world leaders had privately congratulated him for doubting whether climate change was man-made in a speech to a U.N. conference in September. The leading climate change expert said: "The unfair and irrational debate about global warming really annoys me." "The issue is increasingly turning into the fundamental ideological conflict of our times. The climate protection movement represents a new ideology." Ahead of a U.N. climate panel meeting...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- The Czech Republic's dominant power utility, CEZ AS, said Friday it has won the bid to build two more reactors at Romania's only nuclear power plant. The bidding, held by Romania's state-owned Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica, the plant's operator, was for a 2.2 billion euro ($3.2 billion) project to build two 720-megawatt reactors at the Cernavoda plant, to supplement the plant's two existing reactors. Cernavoda is a town on the Danube River in southeast Romania. The new reactors are planned to be operational by 2015, CEZ said. The Czech company said it is due to start...

Prague- Czech Chamber of Deputies deputy chairman Lubomir Zaoralek (senior opposition Social Democrats, CSSD) said today he considered the U.S. offer to Moscow for the Russians to be present at the missile defence radar base the USA plans to station on the Brdy military grounds near Prague as unacceptable. Although U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised in Prague that no U.S.-Russian agreement would be signed without the Czech Republic's consent such approach on the part of the great power could threaten Czech sovereignty and could mean an "inadmissible return of the bipolar world," Zaoralek said. At a press conference today...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Oct. 23, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today welcomed news of the Czech Republic’s decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan as he prepares to pressure other NATO countries to live up to their troop commitments there. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates answers a reporter's question during a press conference with Prime Minister Mirek Topolanekat, right, and Defense Minister of the Czech Republic H.E. Mrs. Vlasta Parkanova, left, in Prague, Czech Republic, Oct. 23, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Speaking with reporters today after meetings...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Oct. 23, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters after meeting today with Czech leaders he’s confident negotiations to place a radar here for a missile defense system are on track and likely to wrap up within the next few months. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the Defense Minister of the Czech Republic H.E. Mrs. Vlasta Parkanova review the troops during an arrival ceremony at the Ministry of Defense in Prague, Czech Republic, Oct. 23, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The proposed X-band...

Czech archaeologists find 7,000 year-old unique statue www.chinaview.cn 2007-10-19 01:26:14 PRAGUE, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Czech Archaeologists have uncovered a part of a half-meter high statue of a woman nearly 7,000 years old in the country, which was called "a find of the century," the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) reported on Thursday. Experts from Brno's Masaryk University confirmed the unique character of the statue uncovered in Masovice, South Moravia area of the Czech republic, the paper said. The hollow legs and haunch of the female statue, made of ceramic, originate in 4,800 - 4,700 B.C., MfD wrote. Nothing similar...

A number of top U.S-based physicists have concluded that the Bush administration used inaccurate claims to reassure NATO allies about U.S. missile defense plans in Eastern Europe. They say the planned Polish-based interceptors and a radar system in the Czech Republic could target and catch Russian missiles, thus threatening Russia's nuclear deterrent. That view supports Russia's criticism of the system. Russia adamantly opposes the plan, and the dispute has helped escalate U.S.-Russian tensions to the highest point since the Cold War. The Pentagon agency overseeing the missile program, the Missile Defense Agency, rejects the scientists' claims, saying their analyses are...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- A Swedish citizen wanted in the U.S. on suspicion of plotting to set up a terrorist camp there was extradited Tuesday from the Czech Republic, officials said. Czech Justice minister Jiri Pospisil ruled on Sept 18 there was no reason to refuse a U.S. extradition request for Oussama Kassir, spokeswoman Zuzana Kuncova said. Kassir left the country by plane on Tuesday bound for the United States, said Kuncova. Kassir was arrested on Dec. 11, 2005, at Prague's Ruzyne international airport while flying from Stockholm, Sweden, to Beirut, Lebanon. He has been held in a Czech prison...

Prague/Bratislava- Over 34,000 foreigners came to live in the Czech Republic in the first six months of this year, compared to 25,000 in the second half of last year, which proves that the number of immigrants living in the country is rising, the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) and foreigner police said today. According to the foreigner police, a total of 356,014 foreigners lived in the Czech Republic in the first half of this year, compared to 321,456 at the end of 2006. This means that about 34,600 foreigners have arrived in the Czech Republic to stay there permanently or temporarily...

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has become the face of a media campaign questioning the impact of global warming. The campaign is run by the free-market think-tank Heartland Institute. It features pictures of Vaclav Klaus and former US vice-president Al Gore under the headline "Global Warming Is No Crisis". It also draws attention to Mr Klaus' speech that is to take place in two week's time at the UN conference on global warming. I spoke to Tom Swiss of the Heartland Institute and started by asking about the campaign's aim. "The ad campaign is focused around the central idea that global...

Prague- The Americans who would work at the possible U.S. radar base in Bohemia do not want to inhabit the nearby barracks the Soviet Military abandoned in the past, which the Czech negotiators have offered them for accommodation, reliable diplomatic and military sources have told CTK. U.S. soldiers prefer constructing their own new building. This would mean falling trees in the selected locality on the edge of the military district Brdy, southwest of Prague. According to officials' previous statements, the radar project preliminarily reckoned with the use of the buildings situated in the vicinity of the possible radar, where Soviet...

A Date Worth Remembering: August 20, 1968 by Krzys Wasilewski On August 20, 1968, the forces of the Warsaw Pact crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia to provide “fraternal help,” or rather, reinstate a hard-line communist regime. In a matter of two weeks, 200,000 soldiers from Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union quenched the liberal rebellion, burying the hopes of easing the Soviet grip in Central Europe for decades. Although it lacked the geographic importance of Poland or East Germany, Czechoslovakia still remained an important place on the map of the USSR’s influence. Shortly after the end of...

BRUSSELS, July 14 (UPI) -- A human rights group says it has serious reservations about the Czech Republic's use of surgical castration to treat sex offenders. The Czech government has said surgical castration is confined mainly to sex offenders who commit murder and then only with the offender's consent. In a new report, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture questions how freely given the consent could be when the prisoner knows the alternative is chemical castration and indefinite confinement in a psychiatric hospital, BBC News reported Saturday. The committee, under the Council of Europe, said it was concerned about...

Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to visit again your world-famous institute and to see many friends here. Thank you for the invitation. I met your President Edward Crane 5 weeks ago in Chicago at the Milton Friedman Memorial Service and he said: “the invitation is permanently open”. So I am here. I came here today as a president of the free and democratic Czech Republic, of a country which – now already more than 17 years ago – succeeded in getting rid of Communism, of a country which quite rapidly, smoothly and without unnecessary additional costs overcame...

Prague- Inhabitants of nine Czech municipalities in central and west Bohemia overwhelmingly rejected the construction of a U.S. radar base on Czech territory, on the Brdy military grounds, in local referenda and one village in a poll today, the municipalities' mayors informed CTK. Results of local referenda are not binding on the government or parliament. Referenda on the radar base took place in seven towns and villages in central Bohemia in the vicinity of Pribram - in Rozmital pod Tremsinem, Bezdekov pod Tremsinem, Vesin, Sedlice, Volenice, Vranovice and Vsevily, bordering on the Brdy grounds, where a crushing majority of inhabitants...

Before Bush's visit, Czechs torn over U.S. missile defense plans Monday, June 04, 2007 - Karel Janicek, Associated Press Writer STITOV, Czech Republic (AP) - Big politics rarely play out in little places like Stitov. That is no solace to Vaclav Hudec, whose tiny village is caught in the middle of a national debate over U.S. plans to build a missile defense system here and in neighboring Poland. Hudec, the mayor, and most of the residents of Stitov - population 58 - are bitterly opposed to the idea of hosting a U.S. radar base at the Brdy military zone next...

Prague- The Prague attack by Czechoslovak paratroopers on Reinhard Heydrich, the German Reich's possibly third most powerful man, 65 years ago was a legitimate execution of a criminal under extraordinary circumstances rather than a mere successful murder attempt, Jiri Hanak writes in Pravo today. Edvard Benes, the then Czechoslovak president in exile, managed to "sell well" Heydrich's execution, which helped him make Britain and France revoke their signing of the Munich agreement and which made Czechoslovakia sure of post-war resurrection, Hanak writes. The former Czechoslovak communist regime, mainly before 1968, tried to play down the assassination of Heydrich, then Nazi...

Czech leader backs U.S. missile defense Fri May 25, 11:30 PM ET BRNO, Czech Republic - The Czech prime minister told a summit of 15 European leaders Friday that a planned missile defense system, parts of which the United States wants to base in the Czech Republic and Poland, is vital to Europe's security. "The defense of Europe against missiles from some states and organizations is a necessary step which will significantly increase our security and also the security of our European allies and neighbors," Mirek Topolanek told the annual gathering of presidents from central, southern and eastern Europe. The...

Czechs remember Russians abducted by Soviet secret police 18.5.2007 - Rob Cameron In Prague last week there was a brief ceremony to commemorate the thousands of Russian émigrés illegally abducted by the Soviet secret police at the close of World War Two. The abductions began as soon as the Red Army began to liberate Czechoslovakia in 1944, and continued long after the Soviets arrived in Prague in May 1945. It's one of the most mysterious chapters in Czechoslovakia's 20th century history, but the fate of those abducted has not been forgotten. A military band played and the wind blew through...

The futuristic design has provoked strong reactions A controversy has erupted in the Czech Republic over the design of a new national library building in Prague. The design, by the Czech-born architect Jan Kaplicky, seems to be loved and loathed in equal measure. Czechs have nicknamed it "the Octopus". Mr Kaplicky has come up with what can best be described as a nine-storey green and purple blob. Now even President Vaclav Klaus has joined the increasingly bitter debate. He is among the opponents. Letna Plain, a dusty and windswept strip of land just a stone's throw away from Prague...

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, in an interview with Interfax on the eve of his visit to Russia, said there are no reasons for revising country’s position on deployment of elements of the U.S. missile defense on its territory. “The Czech Republic has begun talks with the United States on the deployment of U.S. radars in our territory, and I do not think that things should be revised,” the president said. “I know that Russia was informed of U.S. plans long time ago, and the U.S. missile defense cannot be used against Russia,” Klaus said, adding that he will try to...

Russia may stop implementing a key defence treaty because of concerns over US plans for a missile shield in Europe, President Vladimir Putin said. Mr Putin made the threat during his annual address to parliament - which he said would be his last as president. He also hit out at an influx of foreign money which he said was being used to meddle in Russia's internal affairs. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed Russian concerns over the missile shield as "ludicrous". BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says Mr Putin's speech marks a significant raising of diplomatic stakes. The Russian...

OSTRAVA, Czech Republic, April 25 Asia Pulse - Construction on Hyundai Motor's (KSE:005380) Czech plant started Wednesday, heralding the carmaker's efforts to expand its presense in Eastern Europe. The 1.1 billion euro (US$1.5 billion) project aims to give Hyundai the ability to churn out 300,000 cars every year. During the first part of construction, to be completed by March 2009, the plant will make 200,000 units. This will be increased by 100,000 by 2011. Ostrava, located in the eastern part of the Czech Republic, is famous for its steel production and coal mining. It is close to both Poland and...

Rare Devil's Bible to return to Prague for exhibition Stockholm- The rare Devil's Bible, which Swedish troops took away from Bohemia during the Thirty Years' War and which Czech PM Mirek Topolanek got acquainted with during his visit to Sweden today, will return temporarily to Prague this year and put on display in the National Library. Stockholm's Royal Library experts told Topolanek that the Devil's Bible (Codex Gigas) is one of the most valuable medieval manuscripts summarizing the period knowledge. The manuscript, weighing 75 kg, has a wooden cover in white leather of 92x50.5x22 centimetres. Its digitalisation is underway, the...

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a a 'religion' that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms. The right-wing president, a free-market champion, wrote to the U.S. Congress that adopting tough environmental policies to fight climate change would have destructive impact on national economies. 'Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism,' Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce. The U.S. House Subcommittee for Energy and Air Quality was due to hold a hearing on...

Guinness is cheapest in Prague! Monday, April 2, 2007 A pint of Guinness is cheaper in Prague than Dublin, Budapest is the city to go for a bargain Big Mac and the price of a cappuccino will have coffee fans frothing in Rome. But London, often condemned as an expensive place to stay, compares favourably with supposedly cheaper tourist destinations. Prague is the cheapest place to enjoy a short break, with typical total costs of just £203.89. In the Czech capital, you can find a Big Mac at £1.52, a typical threecourse meal at £6.64 and a coffee £1.11. A...

Six million is too many. A modification, if you will, of the infamous World War II–era immigration policy of the government of Canada, which condemned boatloads of European Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust. “One is too many,” was the official Canadian policy of the time. Here in the Czech Republic, the increasingly popular notion continues to spawn that love-ins of the Holocaust or Shoah era are flooding the marketplace for scholarly ideas. It’s a canard that continues to gain traction in this Central European country and is positively frightening when one considers the horrifying phenomenon of Holocaust-denial conferences...

Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader By Kevin Mooney CNSNews.com Staff Writer March 12, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Centralized planners seeking to "rule from above" are operating under the guise of environmentalism and other fashionable "isms" in a bid to attack freedom and liberty, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said here. Addressing an audience at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Klaus argued that although communism has been eradicated in Eastern Europe, there are renewed efforts in this new century to reintroduce statist schemes. Those who have experienced the absence of freedom in their lifetimes have a "special...

Czech premier rejects social protocol By Dana Spinant The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Mirek Topolanek, has warned that plans to add a social dimension to the EU constitution to make it more palatable to French voters will run into difficulty. Topolanek, leader of a centre-right government with liberal instincts, said that a social protocol should “absolutely not” be added to a revised text of the EU constitution. On the eve of the EU’s spring summit, which has EU competitiveness at the top of its agenda, Topolanek said that member states had to dismantle their welfare systems in order...

A top advisor to President Bush left for Moscow Tuesday to deal with rising tensions between the US and Russia over American plans to build missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. The International Herald Tribune reports that national security advisor Stephen Hadley set out for talks in Moscow just a day after a Russian general warned that Poland and the Czech Republic could become targets if they played host to US antimissile bases, meant to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles. The trip by the adviser, Stephen Hadley, was planned weeks ago. But it now comes in the...

The Bush administration reiterated Thursday that the missile defense system it plans to build in central Europe is not directed against Russia. The comments follow a reported warning that Moscow might withdraw from a Cold War-era arms reduction agreement if the U.S. plans go forward. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.Officials here say Russia has been consulted at various levels about the U.S. missile-defense plans and intentions, and they say they are puzzled by the repeated caustic comments about the envisaged system from Moscow.The Bush administration announced last month it was opening formal negotiations with Poland and the...

Russia's Strategic Forces commander General Nikolai Solovtsov speaks during a news conference in Moscow February 19, 2007. Russia's military is capable of firing missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic if they agreed to host a U.S. missile shield, Solovtsov said, but added it was for the Kremlin to decide. REUTERS/Yuri Samoligo MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's military is capable of firing missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic if they agreed to host a U.S. missile shield, Russia's Strategic Forces commander said, but added it was for the Kremlin to decide. President Vladimir Putin has described Washington's plans to deploy...

A Russian general has threatened a tough response if the United States goes ahead with a plan to site a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. "If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic take such a decision, the strategic missile force will be able to aim at these installations," said the force's head, General Nikolai Solovtsov, on Monday. Russia, he said, could easily restart production of medium-range missiles if the decision were taken to withdraw from a Cold War-era treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed by Moscow and Washington in 1987. "If...

It's a good time to be in Czech business, if the latest spate of economic numbers is any guide. Over the past two weeks the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ) has reported a series of robust gains in major indicators, apainting an economic picture that is rosy and getting rosier. Czech industry experienced a banner 2006, with production soaring thanks to fast-growing exports. A long-awaited recovery of the eurozone economy towards the end of the year means Czech exporters can churn out and ship even more cars and electronics in 2007. The unemployment rate shrank significantly over the past year, and...

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions: Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?• A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a...

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions: Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?• A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a...

Berlin- German Chancellor Angela Merkel could have spared her today's visit to Prague aimed at studying the Czech position on the European constitutional treaty, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) writes today. It would have sufficed if the Foreign Ministry office had submitted to Merkel, who understands Czech well, a selection of newspaper articles the leading Czech politicians have published on the constitution in the past days, the paper says. It is possible to conclude from these articles that the Czech position not only did not soften but even has toughened, regardless of the hopes that some people in...

Jan Palach's suicide remembered 38 years on [16-01-2007] By Rob Cameron Tuesday marks the 38th anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach, the young student whose suicide transformed him into a symbol of Czechoslovak resistance following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. Jan Palach would have turned 59 this year he not taken his own life. His legacy, however, lives on. On January 16th, 1969, a 20-year-old student from Prague's Philosophy Faculty set off for Wenceslas Square, the city's busiest thoroughfare. The country was still under occupation by Soviet troops five months after the invasion. The purge of reformers within the ranks...

U.S. radar base request stirs Russian warning 1/21/2007 PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - The United States has asked the Czech Republic to host a radar base that would be part of a global missile defense system, the prime minister announced Saturday, drawing a warning from Russia of retaliatory actions. U.S. officials contend the system could defend Europe against intercontinental missiles fired by states such as Iran and North Korea. But the Kremlin warned that the military balance in Europe could be at stake and said the development risked a new arms race. Independent defense experts have said the ground-based missile...