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A monument to the US President Woodrow Wilson will be re-erected in Prague, a City Hall official said on Thursday after a meeting with a representative of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Five sites have been chosen where the memorial might be positioned. The original monument was built in 1928 in front of Prague’s main train station which also bore Mr Wilson’s name, but was destroyed by the Nazis after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Woodrow Wilson, who was the US president during the First World War, defended Central European nations’ right to self-determination which was instrumental in the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

Two Czechs who were trapped under an avalanche in the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia on Thursday have been rescued. The accident happened when a group of Czech tourists was hiking in a poorly accessible part of the mountains; after the avalanche hit them, one of the men was able to get to the surface and called the mountain rescue service.

A presidential election planned for this Friday could be postponed due to a dispute over how the bicameral vote should be held. A decision by the Chamber of Deputies procedural committee on Wednesday to back a public vote brings the lower house into conflict with the Senate, where the majority is in favour of a secret vote. Senate chairman Přemysl Sobotka said if agreement is not reached during talks between representatives of both houses on Thursday then Friday’s joint session of Parliament could be suspended while a solution to the stalemate is sought. Mr Sobotka said he would not describe the situation as a constitutional crisis, but instability which required political negotiation.

A hastily arranged meeting of the governing coalition failed to make any headway over the issue on Wednesday. The coalition’s biggest party the Civic Democrats – who control the Senate – are in favour of a secret vote. But their partners the Greens and the Christian Democrats, along with the opposition Social Democrats and at least some Communist legislators, back a public vote.

The incumbent Václav Klaus is set to face Jan Švejnar in Friday’s vote, with Mr Klaus regarded by many pundits as the favourite. An opinion poll by the CVVM agency released on Wednesday suggests that both presidential candidates have equal public support of 42 percent. However, Mr Klaus may have more opponents than Mr Švejnar: 22 percent of respondents said they were decidedly against the incumbent, compared to 16 percent strongly opposed to the challenger.

Czech police last year unlawfully took DNA samples from both persons remanded in custody and others who had been sentenced, the ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, said on Wednesday. Mr Motejl said the database into which the DNA samples were entered was itself not legally based. He said the police should destroy all DNA samples if asked to do so by prisoners who had been tested without their prior agreement. Mr Motejl said the database should be defined by law, not based on an internal police order as it is now. Police took 17,000 DNA samples in 2007.