News

Eight barrel organ players from five countries performed on Prague’s Kampa on Tuesday as part of a one-day festival organised by the National Museum. The event is the first in a series of international barrel organist gatherings that will take place between now and the end of the month in Liberec, Brno and elsewhere and follows a successful exhibition dedicated to the mechanical instrument at the Czech Museum of Music.

Police have charged a 29-year-old woman with the murder of her new-born baby in the town of Krnov in the Moravia-Silesia Region. The woman is accused of stabbing the baby to death immediately after its birth last Thursday, a spokesperson for the police said. The woman had kept her pregnancy secret and said she had miscarried when a medical team was called out to treat her for heavy bleeding; they subsequently found the baby’s body hidden in her bed.

An outdoor exhibition entitled Signal Prague recalling last year’s Signal festival of light art in the capital and sister project Czech The Light, which brought video mapping and installations to the regions, has opened on the capital’s Na Příkopě St. The event is also meant to serve as an invitation to this year’s Signal festival, which takes place on the third weekend of October. In 2013 the first such free festival was attended by around 250,000 people.

The Czech Republic is preparing to send military materials to democratic forces in Iraq fighting the radical Islamic State, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The supplies will go to Iraqi government units in Baghdad and the regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is at present coming under attack from the militants. The weapons could be provided in the form of intergovernmental aid or by means of a standard trade agreement, the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs' statement said.