JUSTICE - Suspended High Court Judge Jitka Horová was not a collaborator with the communist secret police (StB), according to a Nov. 16 Prague City Court ruling. Horová, who denied the accusation, said the court probably made a mistake with her name when it screened her against Interior Ministry's official list of StB collaborators.

MEMORIAL - President Václav Klaus was praised and heckled Nov. 17 at a memorial for the peaceful student demonstrations that overcame violent police oppression, leading to the fall of communism. While Klaus was calling the Velvet Revolution of Nov. 17, 1989, the birth of freedom, some shouted "Klaus away from the castle."

THWARTED - A soldier stopped renowned Czech architect-designer Bořek Šípek from raising the EU flag outside Prague Castle Nov. 17. Former President Václav Havel told the Czech media that he finds it shameful that the EU flag is not flying at the presidential seat as it does in other member states.

HITMAN - Police arrested a Plzeň man who allegedly tried to hire a contract killer on the Internet, according to the Associated Press. The 30-year-old man offered $2,400 (58,800 Kč) for someone to kill his 42-year-old wife and make it look like an accident, said Helena Malotínská, a police spokeswoman.

COURTS - František Oldřich Kinský will sue the Czech Republic for 100 billion Kč ($4 billion), his attorney told the Czech press Nov. 21, because it did not allow him to reclaim property his family lost when the Beneš decrees, targeted at former Nazi collaborators, unjustly expelled them from the Czech Republic after World War II.