News

Five Czechs died when the plane they were flying in crashed near the airport in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Sunday. The aircraft belonged to a Czech airline company called Fun Air from Karlovy Vary. The dead included the aircraft’s two pilots, a married couple and another woman. One of the victims was the company’s owner Miroslav Jager. The plane had been flying from Hradec Kralove to Kiev when it came down by a motorway near the airport; it then went on fire. The Ukrainian authorities have suggested pilot error may have been responsible for the accident.

The attorney for Ludmila Brozova-Polednova, a former prosecutor from the show trial with Milada Horakova, will appeal a verdict under which Mrs Polednova was sentenced to eight years in prison for judicial murder. Ludmila Brozova-Polednova, who is now 86, sat on the panel that condemned the democratic politician Milada Horakova to death in 1950, under the Czechoslovak Communist regime. Mrs Horakova was the only woman ever to be executed in communist Czechoslovakia for political reasons.

The number of Czechs charged with possessing marihuana is increasing, according to data released by the Justice Ministry and quoted in Lidove noviny. In the first nine months of this year, 474 people who grow cannabis for their own use were charged, compared to 366 for the whole of last year. The number of people being prosecuted for marihuana possession is increasing as well. Meanwhile, calls for legalization of marihuana among the lower house deputies are growing stronger.

Czech singer and pianist Maketa Irglova and Irish musician Glen Hansard on Sunday received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association best soundtrack award for the Irish film Once. The LAFCA prizes are regarded as the first indicators of what films could succeed in the battle for the Oscars. In January, the low budget film Once with Irglova and Hansard in the lead roles, won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.