RESIGN

Police President Vladislav Husák resigned March 23 amid allegations that he tipped off suspects in a biofuel scandal last spring. Interior Minister Ivan Langer has offered Husák the position of deputy director of the Foreigners’ Police instead. Husák said he was not resigning because he was guilty, but because of media pressure. He is considering legal action against several newspapers, he said.

The eviction last fall of hundreds of Roma from Vsetín, east Moravia, was legal and did not violate human rights, Ombudsman Otakar Motejl said in the daily Mladá fronta Dnes March 27. Roma who had defaulted on their rent were evicted from the town and moved up to 70 kilometers (43.4 miles) away. Former Vsetín Mayor Jiří Čunek, now regional development minister, has been criticized by human rights groups for the evictions.

Prague’s Na Homolce Hospital has begun performing robot-assisted heart surgery, spokeswoman Jitka Kalousková told ČTK March 15. The head of cardiovascular surgery said robots could perform up to one-third of the hospital’s surgeries within three years. Na Homolce is the only Czech hospital performing such surgery, and the practice is rare worldwide.

Foreigners owe nearly 40 billion Kč ($1.9 billion) in unpaid medical bills to Czech hospitals, the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS) said March 26. The majority of foreigners treated were Slovak, Ukrainian, German and Vietnamese, the UZIS said.

Prague’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics could put it into debt for years, financial analyst Pavel Sobíšek told Hospodářské noviny March 27. The estimated 135 billion Kč cost would likely be surpassed, although Prague would benefit from improved infrastructure, Sobíšek, from HVB Bank, said. City councilors voted March 22 to officially submit Prague’s Olympic bid.

ARMENIA

Prime Minister Andranik Margarian died March 25 of heart failure, a government spokesperson said. Margarian, 55, came to power in 2000, shortly after armed gunmen stormed parliament in 1999 and killed then-Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 12.

Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke out March 25, condemning the March 23 Iranian seizure of 15 British naval personnel and calling for their release. The Britons — 14 men and one woman — were on a mission off the Iraqi coast when they were seized at gunpoint onboard the HMS Cornwall. Tehran says the vessel had strayed into Iranian waters, a charge the UK government denies.

An estimated 10,000–15,000 protesters rallied in Minsk March 25 against President Alexander Lukashenko. The rally was marked by scuffles with police and hundreds of arrests but no serious violence, reports said. Washington has called Lukashenko “Europe’s last dictator.” He has held onto power since 1994 in a series of elections denounced by the West as undemocratic.

Ten people were killed and several others injured after a fire broke out in a Moscow nightclub in the early hours of March 25. The blaze occurred when a performer in a “fire show” accidentally set his clothes and the stage alight, reports said. The incident comes five days after at least 63 died in a fire at a home for the elderly in southern Russia. Fire deaths are a major cause of death in Russia, where about 17,000 people died in fires in 2006, the government has said.

Northern Ireland’s two longtime political rivals agreed March 26 to begin sharing power by May 8. Ian Paisley, the hard-line Protestant head of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Gerry Adams, head of the mainly Catholic Sinn Fein party associated with the Irish Republican Army, announced the agreement at a press conference in Belfast. The UK government had originally set March 26 as the deadline for power sharing to begin, but has said it can accept the postponement until May. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, both lauded the deal as groundbreaking.

Conservative Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy stepped down from his post March 26 to focus on his campaign for the presidency. Recent polls have shown Sarkozy’s main rival, Socialist Segolene Royal, to be closing in. The election’s first round is scheduled for April 22 and is expected to go to a second round May 6.

The wife of one of the most prominent Dutch members of the Nazi Party during World War II has died, her family said in a statement March 24. Florrie Rost van Tonningen, 92, dubbed “the Black Widow,” was convicted several times after the war for her continued involvement in the neo-Nazi movement. Her husband, Meinoud, the second-highest member of the Dutch Nazi Party, died in prison while awaiting trial after the war.

A member of a revolutionary group that terrorized West Germany in the 1970s was released March 25 after serving 24 years for involvement in nine murders. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, is the first member of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, to be paroled. The group kidnapped and murdered public officials it believed stood for capitalist oppression. The victims’ families have protested that Mohnhaupt never expressed regret.