Newsletter No. 43/2013

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) - Dozens of current or former Russian diplomats and their spouses enjoyed luxury vacations and spent tens of thousands of dollars on concert tickets, fine clothing and helicopter rides as they lied about their incomes to get the government to pay their health care bills with money meant for the poor, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

"Diplomacy should be about extending hands, not picking pockets in the host country," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a Manhattan news conference. He called it "shameful and systemic corruption."

Jiří Rusnok = R (Premierminister der Tschechischen Republik), Vlastimil Picek = P (Verteidigungmnister), Jan Fischer = F (Finanzminister) – Parlament am 5.12.2013

Jiří Rusnok = R (Prime Ministr), Vlastimil Picek=P (Secretary of Defense), Jan Fischer = F (Minister of Finance)  

Parliament December 5, 2013  

Amnesty International has urged North Korea to close two political prisoner camps, where it says torture is rampant and execution commonplace.

It has released new satellite images of the Kwanliso 15 and 16 camps. It quotes one former official as saying that inmates are forced to dig their own graves and women disappear after "servicing" officials. Amnesty alleges that hundreds of thousands of people are held in detention facilities in North Korea. Amnesty says it has passed its latest evidence to the UN Commission of Inquiry investigating human rights abuses in North Korea.

The old joke is that PPF doesn't need to invest in the media, because it has Petr Dvořák at Czech TV. When MFD related this to Petr Kellner in April 2012, he let it go without responding. But when MFD asked Kellner's government-relations chief, Vladimír Mlynář, about the censorship situation at ČT, he said he would almost consider it a conflict of interest to comment, because of Dvořák. Yet Dvořák hasn't worked for PPF for nine years, at least not officially. Milan Uhde, who heads the ČT Council, told Respekt that he doesn't believe the rumors about Dvořák wanting to privatize the TV station or its land, but he hinted that PPF had a hand in installing Dvořák in the CEO post. To fill out the picture, the tablet-only publication Dotyk wrote last week that ČT, under Dvořák, has rapidly been depleting its Kč 3.5bn reserves. A cash-strapped ČT might have to move to cheaper quarters, allowing its prime land to be sold. Privatizing the station itself wouldn't be so easy, though, and might require creating a disaster of the magnitude of ... Sazka.