News

A memorial to underground rock musician Milan "Mejla" Hlavsa has been opened at a building on Prague's Jecna Street where he lived during the 1970s. The memorial is in the form of a jukebox which, for ten crowns, plays his best-known song, "Muchomurky bile".

The police say they have identified the man who shot a television technician in a Prague park this week. According to investigators the offender is an aggressive drug addict who had been previously been sentenced for acts of violence. The offender is believed to have been under the influence of drugs and was threatening a young woman in the park with a gun when the television technician came to her assistance. The offender turned on him and fired two shots without warning. The technician died that night after undergoing extensive surgery. Police have launched a nation wide search for the murder suspect.

Some 1,000 young people are expected to attend another techno party in west Bohemia at the weekend. The rave is taking place on the exact same spot where the police cracked down on a techno party earlier this summer. Its organizers say they have rented the respective plot of land from Friday until Tuesday and want to continue with the party that was broken up by the police. The event has been named ParoubTek after Prime Minister Paroubek whom they hold responsible for the police crack-down. The police are monitoring the situation.

Talks between representatives of the government, the trade unions and employers broke down on Thursday when the latter two groups walked out, saying they were dissatisfied with the government's approach to joint negotiations. The unions and employers say they received documents at the last minute, or after they had already been approved by the government. They have called for an extraordinary meeting of the tripartite, which they want Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek to attend.