CCCCC AA RRRRR OOOO LL II NN N AA CC AA A RR R OO O LL II NNN N AA A CC AA A RRRRR OO O LL II NN N N AA A CC AAAAAA RR R OO O LL II NN NN AAAAAA CCCCC AA A RR R OOOO LLLLLL II NN N AA A STUDENT'S E-MAIL NEWS FROM CZECH REPUBLIC Faculty of Social Science of Charles University Smetanovo nabr. 6 110 01 Prague 1 Czech Republic e-mail: CAROLINA@cuni.cz tel: (+42 2) 24810804, ext. 252, fax: (+42 2) 24810987 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* C A R O L I N A No 166, Friday, June 30, 1995. EVENTS FOR THE WEEK JUNE 22-28, 1995 Railroad Accident Claims 18 Lives in Eastern Bohemia Sixteen youths and two railway workers lost their lives in an accident Saturday night near the town of Koruna na Chrudimsku in eastern Bohemia. Four individuals were injured seriously and one slightly. The accident occurred when four cars came loose from a freight train while being moved at the station in Cechov and collided head-on with a single-car passenger train traveling down the tracks. At the moment of impact, the passenger train was moving at a speed of 30 km per hour (roughly 20 mph) and the freight cars, coasting downhill, at 100 km per hour (roughly 60 mph). Czech Police are working with the Czech Railways to determine how the freight cars came loose from the train, and on Sunday three railway employees were charged in connection with the accident, the worst in this country in 25 years. According to Josef Bazala, director of Czech Railways, the primary cause of the mishap was human failure, as the preliminary investigation has shown that one of the three railway employees being charged in the case was drinking alcohol on duty. Muhammad Shah/Alex Zucker Meciar Declines Official Talks With Czechs While Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus met with his Slovak counterpart Vladimir Meciar towards the end of the European Union summit in Cannes, they did not engage in any official negotiations. Following their meeting, Klaus said he was disappointed because the Slovak premier was only willing to hold talks on the level of ambassadors and ministry officials. Meciar said he was unable to take up official business because he "did not receive any invitation." Following Meciar's statement, the Czechs made an attempt to set up bilateral talks, but were turned down, according to Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Senka mainly due to a lack of time and a full schedule. Klaus met officially with Polish Premier Jozef Oleksy on Tuesday. Jindrich Jirasek/Andrea Snyder ODS and KDS Sign Merger Agreement Vaclav Klaus and Ivan Pilip, the chairmen of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Christian Democratic Party (KDS), signed a "wedding" agreement last week, viewed as the first step toward the consolidation of conservative political parties in the Czech Republic. Both leaders expressed satisfaction with the agreement. KDS Chair Ivan Pilip said he decided in favor of the fusion because the vast majority of KDS's positions on the issues are identical to those of ODS. The agreement is scheduled to be initialed at the two parties' next congresses in the fall. ODS maintains steady support from about 27 percent of Czech voters, whereas KDS is wobbling near the 0.5 percent mark. The Christian Democrats only got into Parliament and the government coalition thanks to a coalition with ODS in the 1992 elections. Tomas Kopecny/Jirka Schneider Sergei Kovalyov Awarded Homo Homini Prize for Stance in Chechen Crisis Human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, a member of Russian Parliament and special envoy of President Boris Yeltsin, received the Homo homini prize last Thursday in Prague from the foundation Clovek v tisni (Man in Distress) for his opposition to Russian policies in Chechenya and his firm stance during the dramatic events recently in the south Russian town of Buddyonovsk. Muhammad Shah/Jirka Schneider Dlouhy No Longer Tops Popularity Charts President Vaclav Havel dethroned Minister of Industry and Trade Vladimir Dlouhy from the position of most popular Czech politician this month. Havel is currently favored by 76 percent of the population, up by 2 percent over May. Dlouhy's popularity has dropped 6 percentage points to the current 72 percent, which may be related to decreasing voter confidence in his party, the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA). Trailing Havel and Dlouhy were Jiri Dienstbier, chairman of the Free Democrats (61 percent), and Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec (55 percent) and Transport Minister Jan Strasky (50 percent), both of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). Neither Prime Minister and ODS Chairman Vaclav Klaus nor the Social Democrats' leader Milos Zeman made it past the 50 percent mark. Tomas Kopecny/Andrea Snyder Apartment Affair Helped Klaus This was the headline introducing an article in last Thursday's "Lidove noviny" about how the affair resulting from Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus' receiving an apartment from the city government (see Carolina no. 163) turned around in a peculiar way. "I've got a whole stack of proposals, offers of apartments and villas to rent or to buy, to move into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or whenever, from all over the country," Klaus told "Lidove noviny." These offers, according to Klaus, came from people who felt the media came down on him unfairly, when a wave of public criticism at the beginning of June forced him to give up a luxurious public apartment granted to him by the Prague 6 district council. Lida Truneckova/Jirka Schneider Brno Stages Biggest Wedding Ever The Boby Center in Brno played host on Sunday to an unusual event titled "The Wedding of the Year," with 29 couples and some 400 wedding guests from throughout the Czech Republic. Antonin Emerle, 57, and Eva Mecnerova, 53, of Prague, were the oldest newlyweds, while the youngest lovers to take their vows were Radim Bilek, 20, and Monika Ottingerova, 18, of Uherske Hradiste. The celebration, paid for in full by the 1+1 Agency, included a wedding night in the Boby Center Hotel. Tomas Kopecny/Alex Zucker BUSINESS/ECONOMICS Government Decides to Sell Off More than One-Fourth of Telecom The Czech government decided last week to sell a 27 percent share in SPT Telecom, the Czech telecommunications monopoly, for 1.32 billion dollars to TelSource, a Dutch-Swiss consortium. "The government's decision was completely unanimous," Premier Vaclav Klaus said after Wednesday's Cabinet session. The Czech press described it as the largest foreign investment yet in this country. Also bidding for shares in Telecom were STET of Italy, TeleDenmark, and the Czech consortia Tel Far and CeTel. With the cash injection TelSource is providing, Telecom has plans to increase the number of phone lines in the Czech Republic from 22 per 100 inhabitants to 36. Lida Truneckova/Alex Zucker Exchange Rates of the Czech National bank (valid from June 30) Checks Cash country buy sell middle buy sell Great Britain 1 GPB 41,085 41,497 41,291 39,87 42,71 France 1 FRF 5,306 5,360 5,333 5,13 5,53 Italy 1000 ITL 15,853 16,013 15,933 15,16 16,70 Japan 100 JPY 30,478 30,784 30,631 29,33 31,93 Canada 1 CAD 18,879 19,069 18,974 18,08 19,86 Austria 1 ATS 2,644 2,670 2,657 2,60 2,72 Germany 1 DEM 18,596 18,782 18,689 18,23 19,15 Switzerland 1 CHF 22,368 22,592 22,480 21,98 22,98 USA 1 USD 25,991 26,253 26,122 25,42 26,82 Slovakia 1 XCU -- -- 34,460 -- -- CULTURE Czech Philharmonic Affair Goes On Ladislav Kantor, general director of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, has been removed from his post. Minister of Culture Pavel Tigrid, who made the move despite disapproval from the Philharmonic's board of directors, said that Kantor was damaging both the country's and the orchestra's reputation by his failure to settle the matter of a controversial concert by the Philharmonic in Bonn. According to Kantor, this concert, held at the invitation of Jiri Grusa, the Czech ambassador to Germany, was set up by chief conductor Gerd Albrecht without the knowledge of the Philharmonic's leadership. The entire matter is made even spicier by the fact that the Philharmonic's board of directors discovered that Albrecht accepted - in violation of his contract, according to the board - royalties of 140,000 DM for performances with the orchestra in the last year. While Tigrid has said he will consider dismissing Albrecht if he does not return the money, Albrecht himself says he does not intend to give back a thing, and that he will settle the dispute in court. Tomas Kopecny/Jirka Schneider SPORTS Czech Soccer on the Level? In spite of this year's high attendance levels, Czech soccer is in a crisis. First Jan Stejskal quit the national team (see Carolina no. 164), and last week Benesov club owner Miroslav Svarc disturbed the calm of summer vacation by telling the press that first-league referees regularly take bribes of 100,000 crowns and up from owners just to officiate fairly. Svarc said he did not know any team that did not pay bribes or any referee that was "clean." While he himself did not name names, others have since come forward with specific charges. While the president of the Bohemian-Moravian Football Association, Frantisek Chvalovsky, said he knew nothing about such practices, the association's executive committee dissolved its referee commission in response to complaints that it was the most ineffective of the association's bodies and named Zdenek Vales to head up a new commission. Vales was rated the worst referee in the first league last year. Tuesday on the television show "Arena," Chvalovsky stood by his statement in a heated debate with Lubos Pucek, rated the league's best referee last year by the referee commission. "The executive committee was elected by the general assembly and can do whatever it wants," Chvalovsky said. A telephone survey conducted simultaneously with the program showed that just 10 percent of the viewers believed Chvalovsky's claims that this year's league results were legitimate. Mirek Langer/Alex Zucker Sports in Brief * The European Football Association dropped the coefficients previously used to set the number of teams allowed in cup tournaments, thereby renewing the Czech Republic's hopes of entering the Masters' League. * Robert Holik of the New Jersey Devils became the sixth Czech in history to play for a Stanley Cup winner in the NHL. * In the "soccer match of the year" a team made up of Czech players who either play or have played for foreign clubs defeated the Czech first-league all-stars 3-1. * Daniela Bartova cleared the bar at 4.14 meters in Wesel, again raising the world record in women's pole vault. * In soccer, Boby Brno lost at home, 2-1, to Groningen in the Intertoto Cup, from which it is possible to advance to the UEFA Cup. * The men of Dukla Praha and the women of Zlin became this year's champions in Czech team handball. * Regulus, trained by Frantisek Vitek and ridden by Libor Sindar, was the winner in this year's Czech Derby, held for the first time in Karlovy Vary. Mirek Langer/Alex Zucker *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Dear readers, this summer Carolina will appear every other week as follows: July 14 Jan Jirak no. 167 July 28 Lida Truneckova no. 168 Aug. 11 Lida Truneckova no. 169 Aug. 25 Jan Jirak no. 170. Andrea Snyder will be translating and Alex Zucker will be editing. We will keep you up to date on our September schedule, and we will return to weekly publication at the end of September. Enjoy your vacation, enjoy your summer! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This news may be published only with "CAROLINA" designation. The subscription is free. Comments and remarks are appreciated. 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