• Weather forecast
    04/23/2024

    Wednesday should bring overcast skies and rain or snow showers around the country. Day temperatures should range between 7 and 11 degrees in Bohemia and 2 and 5 degrees in Moravia and Silesia.

  • Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti opens in Lety

    04/23/2024

    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.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • Prague resident goes on hunger strike against noise pollution
    04/23/2024

    A Prague resident has gone on a hunger strike in protest against the constant noise pollution that disturbs locals in the city centre into the early morning hours. Štěpán Kuchta who lives in Dlouhá Street in Prague's Old Town blames the local authorities for failing to address the problem of constant loud noise from pubs and restaurants, stag party visitors and so called pub-crawlers who disturb the peace into the small hours. He said the noise was driving out local residents who has lived there for decades. A proposal to limit restaurant hours was discussed at length by Prague 1 councilors last week, but failed to win approval. Kuchta went on hunger strike at midnight on Sunday and says he wants to maintain the protest for 10 days.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • Former head of president‘s office Vratislav Mynář charged with subsidy fraud
    04/23/2024

    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.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • Czechia pushing to enforce restricted movement for Russian diplomats in EU
    04/23/2024

    The Czech Republic is seeking support among EU members for its proposal to restrict the movement of Russian diplomats in the Schengen area. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said that it view of Russia’s actions such a move was warranted. The Czech Republic is proposing that Russian diplomats be granted visas and residence permits that allow movement only within the given host country and not throughout Schengen. It also wants the EU to accept only biometric passports, which are more difficult to forge.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • Justice Minister wants to see more alternative punishments, fewer prison sentences
    04/22/2024

    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.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • President nominates two more constitutional court judges
    04/22/2024

    President Petr Pavel has nominated lawyer and sociologist Jiří Přibáň and Supreme Administrative Court judge Tomáš Langášek for judges of the Constitutional Court. The Senate must decide on the nominations within 60 days.

    Přibáň graduated from the Faculty of Law at Charles University and is a professor of law at Cardiff University in Wales, where he also heads the Centre for Law and Society. Langášek has been a judge of the Supreme Administrative Court since March 2013.

  • Weather forecast
    04/22/2024

    Tuesday should be overcast and rainy with snow in the higher altitudes and day temperatures between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius.

  • Prague City Court upholds guilty rape verdict and three-year sentence for former MP

    04/22/2024

    A Prague City Court has upheld a guilty verdict and three-year prison sentence in the case of former MP Dominik Feri, who was convicted of raping three young women, one of them a minor. Feri resigned from his seat and withdrew from politics when the scandal broke. The verdict is binding.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

  • President Pavel’s efforts to mediate pension reform fail

    04/22/2024

    President Petr Pavel’s efforts to mediate a broad agreement on the pension reform have hit the rocks. Monday’s scheduled meeting with Labour Minister Marian Jurečka is going ahead, but the main opposition party ANO cancelled its participation at the talks late last week, saying it would not take co-responsibility for something that the government intends to push through with or without its support. The government's proposal envisages raising the retirement age according to life expectancy, introducing a different basis for calculating old-age pensions, a lower indexation of pensions and a minimum pension amounting to 20 percent of the average wage. ANO has said that if it wins the 2025 general elections and gets to form a government it will scrap the legislation.
    Author: Daniela Lazarová

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