• Dozens injured, others feared buried after explosion in Prague

    Police believe a natural gas explosion may have cause the blast that injured at least 40 people and destroyed an area of in Prague's Old Town Square. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Adam Pemble and Karel Janicek, The Associated Press

    PRAGUE -- A powerful explosion badly damaged an office building in the center of the Czech capital Monday, injuring up to 40 people. Authorities believed people might still be buried in the rubble.

    It was not certain what caused the blast in Divadelni Street, in Prague's Old Town, at about 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), but it was probably a natural gas explosion, police spokesman Tomas Hulan said. Tourists at the famed Charles Bridge also felt the blast.

    The street was covered with rubble and was sealed off by police who also evacuated people from nearby buildings and closed a wide area around the explosion site.

    Zdenek Schwarz, head of the rescue service in Prague, said up to 40 people were injured, at least four of them seriously.

    David W Cerny / Reuters

    An estimated 40 people were injured Monday when an explosion ripped through a building in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Authorities say some people are feared to be buried in the rubble and that natural gas is suspected as the cause.

    Rescue service spokeswoman Jirina Ernestova said there were foreigners among the injured but had no further details immediately.

    Some of the injured were taken to Prague's hospitals for treatment while others, many of whom were hit by flying glass, were treated by rescuers at the scene.

    Firefighters' spokeswoman Pavlina Adamcova said rescuers were still searching the rubble, using sniffer dogs.

    Adamcova said two or three people were still missing.

    Windows in buildings located hundreds of yards from the blast were shattered, including some in the nearby National Theater.

    "There was glass everywhere and people shouting and crying," Vaclav Rokyta, a Czech student, told the AP near the scene.

    "I was in the bathroom, no windows, the door was closed. Honestly, if I had been in my bed I would have been covered in glass," said Z.B. Haislip, a student from Raleigh, North Carolina, who was in a nearby building.

    The Faculty of Social Sciences of Prague's Charles University and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Sciences of Performing Arts are located next to the damaged building.

    The road closures caused major traffic disruption and confused thousands of tourists. Some new arrivals to the city had to stand on street corners, unable to reach their hotels, their baggage loaded onto trolleys. Hotel staff urged them to be patient.

    Prime Minister Petr Necas said in a statement he was "deeply hit by the tragedy of the gas explosion."

    Related:

    PhotoBlog: Rescuers help injured amid the rubble

    This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 7:54 AM EDT

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  • Communism making comeback in Czech Republic

    David W. Cerny / Reuters

    Demonstrators in Prague protest communist victories in regional government elections. In opinion polls, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) has jumped past ruling conservative parties to second place.

    By Jason Hovet and Robert Muller, Reuters

    PRAGUE -- Before the fall of communism, Vaclav Sloup trained the soldiers who caught thousands trying to flee across Czechoslovakia's fortified border to West Germany.

    Today, he helps power a Czech Communist Party that has surged to second place in polls, tapping anger over poverty and graft.

    When communism collapsed in 1989, the once-dominant party was slow to produce the same kind of reformist wing as emerged in other Eastern European countries. While statues of Lenin have vanished and the party insists it has reformed, its lawmakers still greet one another with "comrade" and maintain hard-line foreign policy views such as leaving NATO.

    The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia remains a pariah to many, but it is a pariah commanding 20 percent of the vote.

    Sloup's rise to become education councilor in the northern region of Karlovy Vary has aroused protests by students and former dissidents that demonstrate the strength of emotion, but the 63-year-old refuses to quit because of his past.

    "I carried out my duties when Europe was divided by an Iron Curtain, and it was in accordance with laws of the time," he said. "I have nothing to be ashamed of." 

    However, two Communist councilors, one a former border guard and secret police informant, resigned after demonstrations against the party in Bohemia.

    "The Communist Party is anti-democratic," said David Pithart, a 47-year-old environmental consultant, whose father Petr was a leading dissident and served as Czech prime minister in 1990.

    "The party doesn't know how to govern any other way," he said while at a protest in Ceske Budejovice in December. 

    Second most popular party
    The communists have jumped past ruling conservative parties to second place in polls and would be a prospective partner for the poll-leading, center-left Social Democrat Party after a 2014 general election.

    Social Democrat leader Bohuslav Sobotka now talks openly about prospects of forming a minority government backed by communists. He wants to avoid a repeat of 2010, when his party won the most votes but could not find a partner that would allow it to form a government.

    Any cooperation, however, would require ending a 1995 ban on government-level cooperation with the communists.

    The Social Democrats will debate this controversial issue at a national congress March 15-16, and many delegates may yet shrink from any close political contact.

    Should they refuse to deal with the communists, the country would most likely face an awkward coalition of left and right parties that could stall policymaking.

    Easing the 1995 ban could shift Czech politics to the left, allowing a political consolidation and ending years of unstable rule in which cabinets with a shaky power base have repeatedly been unable to push through their full agenda.

    Prime Minister Petr Necas, a center-right politician, has called the Communist Party "unreformable."

    The communists' return has given rise to soul-searching for many beyond the ranks of party politics in the central European country of 10.5 million.

    In October, the communists won spots on governing councils in the majority of the country's 13 regions in regional elections, gaining 20.4 percent of the overall vote versus 12.3 percent for Necas' Civic Democrats.

    Sitting under a portrait of Karl Marx, Communist Party Deputy Chairman Jiri Dolejs said the party had apologized repeatedly for repressions of the communist era, but may yet need to make another gesture to link up with the Social Democrats.

    "We are now the closest to a coalition in 23 years," he said from his office in the party's massive, nondescript headquarters, which sits on Political Prisoners Street.

    For some, harsh aspects of communist rule have given way to rosier memories of a system that for all its darker aspects offered job security, cheap housing and low-cost food.

    Those memories are growing stronger, especially among retirees and blue-collar workers, as the country suffers the longest recession of its post-communist history, having contracted since mid-2011 because of state spending cuts.

    A January survey found that just 46 percent of people felt that today's system was better than communism, a 21-year low.

    "After almost a quarter of a century, the (communist) stigmatization is not so strong anymore," said Dolejs, an economist who joined the communists in January 1989.

    Related:

    Leftist wins Czech Republic's first direct presidential election

    Huge rally in Prague against austerity measures, alleged corruption

    Stalin gets his city back as Russians celebrate dictator's triumph over Nazis

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  • Leftist wins Czech Republic's first direct presidential election

    Petr Josek / REUTERS

    Winning presidential candidate Milos Zeman is seen on a giant television screen displayed in front of Prague Castle on Saturday.

    By Jan Lopatka, Reuters

    PRAGUE - Leftist former prime minister Milos Zeman won the Czech Republic's first direct presidential election on Saturday, beating a conservative opponent he had accused of favoring foreign interests in a bitter campaign.


    Zeman, a 68-year-old who favors more integration within the European Union, won by 54.8 to 45.2 percent over Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, results from 99.9 percent of voting districts showed.

    Economic forecaster Zeman, a Communist Party member before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, will steer Czechs closer to Europe's mainstream.

    The anti-EU rhetoric of outgoing President Vaclav Klaus, who succeeded late playwright Vaclav Havel, has pushed the country toward the margins of the 27-member bloc.

    Czech presidents do not wield much day-to-day power but represent the country abroad and appoint prime ministers, central bankers and judges.

    Zeman said he wants to overcome divisions provoked by the election in the central European country of 10.5 million people. The final stage of the campaign was marked by doubts cast on the national loyalties of Schwarzenberg, a prince from a centuries-old aristocratic family who lived much of his life in Austria.

    Zeman promised to tackle graft, an issue which has dominated political debate for years.

    "I want to be president of the bottom 10 million. These include voters of Milos Zeman as well as Karel Schwarzenberg. I do not want to be president of mafias that act as parasites on this society," Zeman said.

    Zeman served as Social Democrat prime minister in 1998-2002 under a power-sharing deal with Klaus's right-wing party that critics saw as a breeding ground for corruption.

    Schwarzenberg conceded defeat and congratulated Zeman, but relations between the center-right cabinet and new president may be strained.

    Zeman, who has a folksy manner and a well-advertised appetite for sausages and alcohol, appeals to poorer and rural voters, unlike the government, which has raised taxes, cut social benefits and suffered several corruption scandals.

    During his premiership, Zeman was credited with privatizing the main banks and attracting foreign investment. Opponents criticize his friendship with former communist officials and businessmen with links to Russia.

    Previously, Czech presidents were elected by parliamentary votes that involved a lot of back-room dealing, which led to popular demand for a constitutional change approved last year.

    Ghosts of the past
    The finale of the campaign was marked by appeals to nationalism, unusual for the Czech Republic, whose biggest trading partner is Germany.

    Zeman accused Schwarzenberg of backing the cause of some three million ethnic Germans, known as Sudeten Germans, who were expelled from then-Czechoslovakia after World War Two.

    Schwarzenberg has said that in today's world, the expulsion could be seen as a war crime, but denied allegations he would open the door for demands to return confiscated property.

    Klaus backed Zeman in the vote, saying he wanted a president who had lived in the country all his life, unlike Schwarzenberg, whose family has large land holdings in Austria where he lived in exile during the 1948-1989 communist rule.

    Schwarzenberg said the election was won by lies.

    "The difference of 10 percentage points was the result of this kind of campaign," he said. "It is impossible to defend against certain type of bad-mouthing."

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Outrage after hard liquor banned for some of world's heaviest drinkers

    By Reuters

    PRAGUE -- Czech spirit makers on Friday slammed a government decision to freeze all sales and exports of hard alcohol following a health scare, saying it would unfairly damage their reputations and cost millions in sales.

    A number of leading brands told Reuters on Friday they were suspending production and said smaller firms could face severe cash-flow problems and even bankruptcy.

    The EU country temporarily banned the sale of spirits in shops and pubs last Friday -- a dramatic move in one of the world's heaviest-drinking nations -- after 23 people died and others went blind drinking bootleg alcohol laced with methanol.

    The restriction was extended to exports on Thursday evening, under pressure from the European Union. Prime Minister Petr Necas said he had heard the bloc was preparing to impose its own ban and decided to make a preemptive move.

    Tainted moonshine kills at least 5 in Czech Republic


    The government has vowed to get the drinks back on the shelves of bars and supermarkets as early as next week, as soon as it can impose new safety measures, but has given no firm date.

    'A scar' on Czech goods' reputation
    Spirit companies said the ban and other planned measures like new tax stamps or certificates of origin would have little impact on bootleg makers who operate outside the law.

    The freeze would also damage the brands of reputable companies by bundling them in with bootleggers, they added.

    "It is a scar on the reputation of quality Czech goods for exports," said Zdenek Chromy, deputy chairman of the country's top fruit brandy maker Rudolf Jelinek.

    "Orders from Germany and Austria have already been canceled. We have a shipment to the U.S., where we don't know how things will end up," Chromy added.

    Read more World stories from NBC News

    He said Rudolf Jelinek would stop production on Monday.

    A third of the company's $18.19 million in sales last year were from exports. Slovakia and Poland, which take about 50 percent of the $80 million in annual Czech liquor exports, had already imposed their own freeze.

    Jan Becher-Karlovarska Becherovka, the country's second largest drinks seller and part of France's Pernod Ricard, said it was extending a halt on its 60-80,000 bottle-a-day production that started on Thursday.

    "This is our biggest worry. Our brand is not only alcohol but is a symbol of the Czech Republic," said Vladimir Darebnik, operations director at the company which makes the 205-year-old Becherovka liquor.

    Beer still available
    The ban covers all alcohol with over 20 percent alcohol content but not the country's well-known beers.

    Police have charged 30 people with crimes related to bootleg alcohol, but have not yet found the origin of the deadly spirits.

    Investigators suspect methanol was mixed into bootleg drinks made from industrial alcohol and sold under fake labels as vodka, rum or fruit distillates.

    Huge rally in Prague against austerity measures, alleged corruption

    The illegal drinks market has roughly doubled since 2010 when an excise tax hike was put in place to plug budget holes. Analysts estimate black market sales make up between 15-25 percent of the Czech market.

    Fruko-Schulz, which makes absinthe, vodka and one of many brands of the Czech rum often copied by bootleggers, is losing about $150,000 a day in lost revenue, said sales director Ladislav Kremlicka.

    "The government should act quickly. We have raised the problem of illegal alcohol before, and are sorry that nothing came out of it, only now when there is such an affair and people are dying," he said.

    The company might need to lay off some of its 90 staff after it halted production on Wednesday, he added.

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  • Tainted moonshine kills at least 5 in Czech Republic

    By Reuters

    PRAGUE -- At least five people have died in the Czech Republic and at least 13 others have been hospitalized after drinking bootleg vodka and rum containing methanol, police said Tuesday, in the worst case of fatal alcohol poisoning in the country in at least 30 years.

    While cases like this are rare in the central European state of 10.5 million, state and industry officials estimate illegal liquor sales are up and account for 10-20 percent of the market.

    Police spokeswoman Sona Stetinska said more cases could emerge after the first victim was admitted to hospital last Thursday, Reuters reported.

    The fourth and fifth victims died Tuesday in Prerov, about 180 miles east of Prague, Reuters said. Three others had died in the neighboring Moravian-Silesian region in the northeast of the country over the weekend.


    Police have detained a 36-year-old man suspected of being the source of the tainted liquor.

    Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

    The Health Ministry stepped up checks on restaurants and bars on Tuesday after some of the suspect alcohol turned up in Prague. A ministry spokesman was not available to comment, Reuters reported.

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  • Czech police accuse man of plotting Norway-like copycat terrorist attack

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Roald Berit / AFP - Getty Images

    Anders Behring Breivik in June during his trial in Oslo on charges that he killed 77 people in Norway last year. A 29-year-old Czech man is suspected of plotting a copycat attack.

    Czech authorities say a 29-year-old man suspected of plotting a terrorist bombing was an admirer of Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of killing 77 people in Norway last year.

    The man, who hasn't been identified, was arrested Aug. 10, but the case wasn't made public until Saturday. Police said he has multiple previous convictions for making illegal explosives, at least one of which was used to blow up a small structure.

    M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

    The man drew the attention of police by using the nickname "Breivik" in posts on Internet sites, authorities said Saturday, the Prague newspaper Czechia Today reported. When they searched his home in Ostrava, they disarmed a booby trap before discovering firearms, ammunition, gas masks and improvised explosive devices, as well as police uniforms, Ostrava Police Chief Radovan Vojta said.

    Police evacuated about 80 people from a block of residences around the building on Aug. 10 without giving any details, the newspaper Ostrava Idnes reported at the time. Neighbors told reporters that they believed the 29-year-old man in the apartment was dangerous.

    Investigators said Saturday that now they believed the man was planning to detonate a high-power bomb by remote control. Vojta told Radio Praha that the man was carrying a remote-control detonator when he was arrested and that tests on the presumed bomb showed that it was "functional."


    Tomas Tuhy, head of the regional office of national police, said at a news conference Saturday that investigators believed the man "admires the known murderer Anders Breivik of Norway."

    Breivik is on trial in Norway after having admitted carrying out two attacks in July 2011 that killed 77 people in Oslo and Utoya. He has drawn sympathy from far-right and neo-Nazi groups across Europe, including in the Czech Republic, where he is believed to have visited to buy weapons.

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  • Huge rally in Prague against austerity measures, alleged corruption

    Roman Vondrous / CTK via AP

    People whistle and shout slogans at the anti-government demonstration organized by trade unions and civic groups in Prague on Saturday.

     

    By Reuters

    Tens of thousands of Czechs on Saturday staged one of the biggest protests since the fall of communism, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax increases and alleged corruption and calling for the end of a center-right government already close to collapse.

    Police estimated that 80,000 to 90,000 workers, students and pensioners snaked through the capital to rally in Wenceslas Square. Chanting and whistling, the crowd held banners proclaiming "Away with the government" and "Stop thieves." Organizers put the crowd at 120,000, the BBC reported.

    Rallies of such a scale are rare in the country of 10.5 million people.


    The demonstration against Prime Minister Petr Necas's government is the third such trade union-led protest in 12 months against austerity measures, and the turnout underscored rising public frustration after a series of graft scandals.

     

    "This government is devastating state structures and is demeaning the unprotected with its asocial reforms," Jaroslav Zavadil, the head of the Confederation of Trade Unions, told the crowd.

    The protest comes as the government is working to reaffirm its majority in parliament ahead of a Monday deadline.

    The turmoil was triggered by the defection of Deputy Prime Minister Karolina Peake and her allies from the scandal-ridden junior ruling party Public Affairs.

    Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com

    Peake has pledged her faction will continue to support the cabinet, but on Saturday it remained uncertain whether she could muster the 10 votes the government needs for the "safe majority" that Necas wants from her to avoid early elections.

    An early election, two years after the last vote, would be likely to hand power to the opposition Social Democrats, who have a nearly 20-point poll lead over Necas' Civic Democrats.

    The Social Democrats have pledged to undo some of the government's reforms of the pensions, health care and welfare sectors, and to tax companies and the rich to keep the budget under control.

    "The reforms are not thought-out. The reforms are chaotic," party leader Bohuslav Sobotka said before marching on Saturday.

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  • Mourners follow Vaclav Havel's last journey through Prague

    Petr Josek / Reuters

    People gather to mourn as the coffin of former Czech President Vaclav Havel is transported on a gun carriage to Prague Castle for the funeral ceremony in Prague, Czech Republic, on Dec. 21, 2011.

    Petr Josek / Reuters

    A hearse transporting Havel's body to Prague Castle.

    Reuters reports from PRAGUE:

    Vaclav Havel's actress wife led mourners through the streets of Prague Wednesday, following the playwright-president's body on its last public journey, to the castle where it will lie in state until a funeral Friday.

    Dagmar Havlova was joined by leading figures from the Czech state and society as well as thousands of the former dissident's fellow citizens wishing to pay tribute to the man who died on Sunday, 22 years after leading the "Velvet Revolution" that ended Communist rule over Czechoslovakia in December 1989.

    "This was an honest man," said 67-year-old Jaroslava Leskakova as she marched in the somber cortege behind the hearse through the sunlit cobbled streets of the old city toward the landmark Charles Bridge that leads to Prague Castle.

    "He did not think of himself but did all he could for people to be happy," said Leskakova of Havel.

    Michal Kamaryt / AP

    People jangle keys in a symbolic reference to the Velvet Revolution of 1989 as Vaclav Havel's body makes its final public journey.

    Marko Drobnjakovic / AP

    Dagmar Havlova, right, Havel's widow, and her daughter Nina Veskrnova, left, follow the vehicle carrying his coffin.

    Vit Simanek / AP

    Soldiers carry the coffin of former President Vaclav Havel as they reach Vladislav Hall at Prague Castle.

    Havel was repeatedly jailed by the Soviet-allied Communist authorities in the 1970s and 80s for his activism in the Charter 77 civil rights movement and then led the nation as president from 1989 to 2003.

    Moving from an arts center Havel helped found, where it had lain on view since Monday, to the castle he found himself suddenly thrust into as head of state, Wednesday's journey was symbolic of the transformation in Havel's own life, from censored playwright to a statesman rebuilding eastern Europe. Continue reading.

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  • 'Velvet Revolution' icon Vaclav Havel dead at 75

    Petar Kujundzic / Reuters file

    Presidential candidate Vaclav Havel waves to his supporters from a balcony in Prague in this Dec. 19, 1989 file photo. Havel, a dissident playwright who was jailed by Communists and then went on to lead the bloodless "Velvet Revolution" and become Czech president, died at 75 on Dec. 18, 2011.

    From msnbc.com news services:

    "Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred," Havel famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he always strove to live by.

    Havel was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of other accolades worldwide for his efforts as a global ambassador of conscience, defended the downtrodden from Darfur to Myanmar.

    Among his many honors were Sweden's prestigious Olof Palme Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, bestowed on him by President George W. Bush for being "one of liberty's great heroes."

    An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.

    Read the full story here.

    Petr David Josek / AP

    People gather under a Czech national flag as thousands mark the passing of former Czech president Vaclav Havel at the Venceslaw's square in Prague, Czech Republic, Sunday, Dec. 18.

    Vaclav Havel, the leader of the "Velvet Revolution" that toppled Communist rule of Czechoslovakia, died after a long illness at 75 in his country home north of Prague. CNBC's Mandy Drury reports.