• 10/29/2024

    The District Court for Prague 1 has acquitted the former deputy chief of the communist-era border patrol Jan Muzikář of charges of abuse of office. The prosecutor accused him of having led border guards to injure and kill several people trying to cross the state border under communism. The judge  concluded that the man had not abused his position, merely followed the instructions given to him by his superiors. The verdict is not binding and the prosecutor appealed it on the spot.

  • 10/29/2024

    The queer film festival Mezipatra, which takes place in Prague and Brno, will open on 7 November at the Lucerna cinema in Prague with Yolanda Zauberman's French documentary La Belle de Gaza. The program includes 25 feature films and 48 shorts, with ten feature films competing for the main prize. This year's edition of the festival will be held under the motto Queer Liberates. According to festival director Pavel Bicek, the aim of the Mezipatra festival is to present the lives of queer people in the  broadest possible context.

  • 10/29/2024

    Wednesday should be partly cloudy to overcast with day temperatures between 13 and 17 degrees Celsius.

  • 10/29/2024

    The unseasonably warm weather in Czechia for the end of October on Monday broke temperature records at 26 monitoring stations. The highest temperature for October 28th was recorded in Dobřichovice near Prague, where it reached 21.5 degrees Celsius. At Prague’s Klementinum and several monitoring stations in Central Bohemia it crossed the 20 degree C. mark.

  • 10/29/2024

    A campaign highlighting the danger of accidents on rail crossings in Czechia, launched a year ago, has only had a minor impact, according to the Czech Railway Administration. Data show that 155 people have died on railway lines since the beginning of the year, down by 10 compared to the same period last year. According to the data collected, risk-taking and inattention was most often to blame. The most critical period was from April to July, when the number of victims exceeded twenty every month. In a number of cases the deaths were suicides. The Czech Railway Administration has been working to reduce the number of barrier-free crossings in Czechia, where drivers are only alerted to an oncoming train by lights.

  • 10/29/2024

    The government wants to push for a significant increase in state pensions for former presidents starting from January, 2025, Czech Television reported. Under the present legislation, ex-presidents  receive a monthly pension of CZK 50,000, and an additional CZK 50,000 to cover expenses for an office or assistant. Labour and Social Affairs Minister Marian Jurečka proposes that the presidential pension be increased to CZK 100 000 per month. The lower house of Parliament is to vote on the proposal in the coming weeks.

  • 10/29/2024

    Representatives of the energy company ČEZ on Tuesday signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rolls-Royce SMR on the development of small modular reactors. According to the ctk news agency ČEZ is acquiring a 20 percent stake in the British company worth several billion crowns. The first modular reactor in the Czech Republic should be built in Temelín in the first half of the 1930s, according to ČEZ's current plans. In the future, they should complement conventional nuclear units and replace coal-fired sources in the domestic energy mix.

  • 10/29/2024

    Putin’s vanguard in Central Europe is likely to expand next year, the US website Politico, wrote, noting that this would be a problem for the EU. The website noted that if the former prime minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party wins the 2025 general elections in Czechia, he will join Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico, in their pro-Russian rhetoric. Politico said that while the billionaire “political chameleon" Babiš is less ideologically rooted than Orbán or Fico, he has tilted his party firmly to the right and is echoing rhetoric by his counterparts in Hungary and Slovakia. Just like Orbán, Babiš says that if Donald Trump were U.S. president there would be no Russian war in Ukraine, and like Fico, the Czech mogul has previously signaled a preference for reducing support for Ukraine as it resists the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion, Politico wrote.

  • 10/28/2024

    At a ceremony marking Czechoslovak Independence Day on October 28, President Pavel handed out awards and high state distinctions to 56 people for outstanding services to the state. Among those honoured in memoriam were Pope John Paul II, who helped to bring down the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe, Army General and Legionnaire Sergej Jan Ingr, who was Minister of National Defence in the London government-in-exile and also Ambassador to the Netherlands, and František Moravec, Brigadier General and Legionnaire, Commander of Military Intelligence during World War II and member of the exiled military resistance. Awards also went to London-based architect Eva Jiřičná, choreographer Jiří Kylián, Charter 77 signatory and former Ombudswoman Anna Šabatová, canoeist Martin Doktor and water slalom champion Štěpánka Hilgertová.

  • 10/28/2024

    The founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918 laid the groundwork for a future independent Slovak state, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini told journalists on the occasion of the 106th anniversary of the birth of the former common state of Czechs and Slovaks. Pellegrini said relations between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which were marred by the Czech government's decision to suspend intergovernmental consultations with Bratislava, should not be disrupted by minor misunderstandings and isolated statements by politicians. Accompanied by the Czech ambassador to Slovakia, Rudolf Jindrák, President Pellegrini on Monday laid wreaths at the memorial of Czechoslovak statehood and the co-founder of Czechoslovakia, Milan Rastislav Štefánik.

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