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The Czech Constitutional Court rejected on Monday a complaint by a Romany woman who underwent forced sterilization in an Ostrava hospital in 1997. Ms Iveta Červeňáková, who was 21 at the time, complained about a decision by the police to shelve a criminal case against two of the hospital’s physicians. The Court said none of her constitutional rights were infringed by that decision.

Ms Červeňáková was sterilized in the Ostrava Municipal Hospital in 1997, after giving birth to her second child. A local court awarded her 500,000 crowns, or more than 22,000 US dollars, in damages, but a higher court said last year her claim was covered by the statute of limitations.

The funeral of Jan Winkler, who was Czech ambassador to the UK, took place in Prague on Monday. Mr Winkler died suddenly on February 16, aged 51. A spokesperson for the Czech Foreign Ministry said that the Czech Republic had lost one of its most capable diplomats. Mr Winkler died of natural causes. Mr Winkler became Czech Ambassador to Britain in 2005 after serving at the Foreign Ministry in Prague between 2003 and 2005.

The EU will give struggling eastern European countries support if needed, although the bloc’s leaders have decided against a regional aid plan, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said on Sunday. Speaking after a summit of EU leaders in Brussels chaired by the Czech EU presidency, Mr Topolánek told journalists that he thought it was perfectly clear that the European Union was ‘not going to leave anybody in the lurch’. The one-day emergency summit was called by Mr Topolánek last month to tackle the economic and financial crisis. At the summit, EU leaders were hoping to patch over their differences and avoid a crisis of confidence in the bloc’s single market.

At Sunday’s emergency summit in Brussels, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek also confirmed that new American President Barack Obama would be visiting Prague on April 5. Speculation that the new US president would attend an informal EU summit in the Czech capital next month has been rife in the Czech media in the last couple of days. On Sunday, the Czech premier confirmed that Mr Obama had accepted Prague’s invitation to attend the informal meeting of all 27 EU leaders. Mr Obama will make his first trip to Europe as president of the United States on April 2, when he attends a G20 meeting in London. He will then attend events organized to mark the 60th anniversary of NATO in Germany and France before coming to Prague. It is not yet clear whether he will be accompanied by Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his Prague visit.