News

Sub degree temperatures continue to cause problems around the country with monitoring stations reporting night time lows of -10 to – 15 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country and fresh snow in the mountain regions. Rail traffic has been disrupted these past two days by fallen trees and road traffic in the higher altitudes is complicated by fresh snow and icy roads. Farmers are concerned about the effects of the cold spell on this year’s harvest with some predicting losses of up to 40 percent.

A Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti opened on Tuesday at the site of a former concentration camp in Lety, south Bohemia. Over 1,300 Roma passed through the camp between 1942 and 1943 and more than 300 died there, mostly women and children. Over 500 inmates were sent to extermination camps.

The memorial includes a place of remembrance and a visitor centre with a permanent exhibition that presents testimonies of witnesses in audiovisual form.

The site originally served as a pig farm and it took close to three decades for post-communist governments to buy out the property and erect a dignified memorial in its place.

Vratislav Mynář, who was in charge of the Office of the President during the tenure of Miloš Zeman has been charged with EU subsidy fraud. The charges were filed in connection with the reconstruction of his guesthouse in Osvětimany. Mynář's company received a CZK 5.99 million subsidy 13 years ago, but the authorities later found that it had applied for the money under false pretenses. The company returned the grant last year.

Justice Minister Pavel Blažek says Czechia should follow the example of other European countries in applying more alternative punishments to prison such as fines or community service. Speaking on Czech Television, Mr. Blažek said that although alternative punishment is an option and the number of fines as a form of punishment has increased in the past three years, the Czech Republic and Slovakia still have the most prison sentences by European standards. As a result, the ministry has for years been struggling to deal with the problem of overcrowded prisons.