• Slovak girl wins Czech-Slovak Miss Roma beauty pageant
    06/15/2014

    A 17-year-old girl from Slovakia won the Miss Roma 2014 beauty pageant held in the eastern Czech town Hodonín on Saturday night, the news website novinky.cz reported. Romany girls from Slovakia also finished on second and third place. The contest included a czardas dance which the jury said played a big role in evaluating the finalists. Organizers believe the beauty contest is a way of fostering Romany girls’ self-confidence.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Czech Dino Park operator expands to Spain
    06/15/2014

    The Plzeň-based West Media firm which operates a network of dinosaur-themed amusement parks in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is expanding to Spain, the news agency ČTK reported on Sunday. Its first Dino Park in Spain should open near the town of Benidorm on the Mediterranean Costa Blanca, in early July. It has taken the company about a year to set up the park in Spain, which will have 26 models of prehistoric animals, the firm said. Its first Dino Park opened in Plzeň in 2002.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Aviation museum draws most visitors during Prague museum night
    06/15/2014

    The aviation museum in the Prague district of Kbely drew over 24,000 visitors during the 11th annual Prague Museum Night on Saturday, the highest number of all participating venues. The event saw 39 museums, galleries and other venues in the capital open their doors to the public between 7 PM on Saturday and 1 AM on Sunday; organizers said the institutions, including the National Museum, the Václav Havel Library and the Police Museum, in total registered nearly 170,000 visits, some 20,000 more than last year.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Czechs mark anniversary of WWII Lidice massacre
    06/14/2014

    Czech officials, survivors and other guests marked the 72nd anniversary of the Nazi massacre in Lidice. The German authorities razed the central Bohemian village to the ground and killed most of its inhabitants in retaliation for the assassination of high-ranking Nazi official, Reinhard Heydrich, in 1942. The head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Dominik Duka celebrated a mass on Saturday in the village to commemorate the victims including the local priest, Josef Štembera, who was offered to leave by the Nazis but he chose to say and die with his parishioners.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Handball: Czechs beat Serbia to qualify for world championships
    06/14/2014

    The Czech national handball team sensationally beat Serbia 32:21 in Brno on Saturday in the second leg of their qualifying tie and booked a spot at the world championships in Qatar next year. They lost the first leg 15:23 in Serbia last week. The women’s national handball team, meanwhile, lost to Poland 22:25 on Saturday, failing to qualify for this year’s European championships.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Civic Democrats nominate ex-mayor as ballot leader in Prague
    06/14/2014

    Former Prague mayor Bohuslav Svoboda has been nominated the leader of the Civic Democrat ballot in October’s local elections. Mr Svoboda, who served as mayor between 2010 and 2013, received 57 out of 74 votes at the party’s regional congress on Saturday, the news agency ČTK reported. The chair of the party’s Prague organization, Filip Humplík, will be number two on the ballot, followed by Jaroslava Janderová, Alexander Bellu and Alexandra Uženija. Local elections will be held in October.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Thousands join Prague walk for breast cancer
    06/14/2014

    Thousands of people joined Avon walk for breast cancer through central Prague on Saturday to raise awareness of the disease. The march began at Old Town Square at noon and concluded several hours later at the Žluté lázně resort on the bank of the Vltava. Some 7,000 patients are diagnosed with breast cancer in the Czech Republic each year, while another 2,000 die of the disease.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Social Democrats reject inner-party vote on church property deal
    06/14/2014

    Social Democrat leadership on Saturday rejected a proposal to hold an inner-party vote on taxation of a controversial church property deal. Some Social Democrat officials pushed for taxing the financial compensation Czech churches receive in compensation for property confiscated by the Communist regime in the 1950s, as approved by a Czech centre-right government in 2012. Approving the plan could destabilize the Czech government as the coalition Christian Democrats strongly oppose any changes to the church restitution deal.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • Communists push for lifting of Iran nuclear plant embargo
    06/14/2014

    The Czech Republic’s Communist Party has put forward a motion to cancel legislation that prohibits Czech firms from supplying technology to the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, the news agency ČTK reported on Saturday. The party argues the law is obsolete as the power plant is complete, and no supplies of Czech equipment can take place. It is the Communist Party’s third attempt to have the law scrapped. The legislation was adopted in 2000 in a reaction to plans by a Czech firm to export air conditioning system to the plant; the plan came under criticism from US and UK governments.
    Author: Jan Richter

  • In tennis, Štěpánek reaches semis at London’s ATP event
    06/14/2014

    Czechs tennis player Radek Štěpánek defeated South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 1-6 6-2 6-3 at the Aegon Championships in London to reach the tournament semi-finals, his first in two years. Czech number one Tomáš Berdych, meanwhile, has been knocked out after he lost to Feliciano Lopez of Spain in the quarter-finals. Štěpánek will now face Lopez to qualify for the finals.
    Author: Jan Richter

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