Daily news summary
Brno court rejects complaint over Frljic theatre plays
The regional court in Brno has rejected a complaint by the head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Dominik Duka regarding two theatre plays staged in Brno in May of last year.
The plays Our Violence, Your Violence and The Curse, directed by Oliver Frljic from Croatia, included a scene in which Jesus rapes a Muslim woman, sparking protests from some of the locals who forced their way on stage and tried to stop the performance.
Cardinal Duka filed a lawsuit against the theatre on the grounds that the plays were an attack on his rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights such as the right to freedom of religion and the right to dignity and honour.
The judge said the scenes were allegorical and could not be seen as violating individuals' rights.
Czech Wikipedia to shut down on Thursday over EU copyright reform
The Czech version of Wikipedia will be inaccessible on Thursday since its editors are going on a one-day strike against the EU copyright reform.
They claim the proposed new norms will restrict their right to cite sources and thus reduce the quality of the encyclopaedia.
After two years of heated debate the European Parliament is expected to vote on the proposed copyright reform at the end of March.
Wikipedia has shut down its pages in several countries in protest at the plans.
Former detective charged in connection with police leaks
A former member of the country’s unit for fighting organized crime, Ludek Vokal, has been charged in connection with information leaks from the force during his time in service.
The former detective is suspected of having leaked information from a number of open cases to members of the underworld.
The leaks occurred between 2010 and 2015. The police was severely criticized for the leaks at the time.
Ex-Okamura party MPs set up Unified Alternative for Patriots
Three MPs who quit Tomio Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy party have set up a new grouping. Lubomír Volný, Marian Bojko and Ivana Nevludová are now members of Unified Alternative for Patriots, which was officially registered on Friday and plans to take part in May’s elections to the European Parliament.
Mr. Volný said the three had left Freedom and Direct Democracy as it had permitted racists and neo-Nazis to join it. He has rejected a call from the party to also resign from his seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
Lubomír Volný has in the past referred to Václav Havel as a traitor, criticised the Erasmus scheme for students and offered to “take outside” a dispute with another MP during a lower house session. Soon after he said he would challenge Mr. Okamura for the party chairmanships his Moravian Silesian branch of Freedom and Direct Democracy was dissolved.
Experts warn of future lack of electric charging stations
The number of charging stations for electric vehicles is not growing fast enough to meet future demand, according to the Association of Automobile Producers.
The head of the association Bohdan Wojnar says that at the present pace of construction in 2025 there will be a lack of 3,000 electric charging stations in the country and five years later a lack of 20,000 such stations.
According to a study compiled by Boston Consulting Group the number of electric-powered vehicles will grow by 50 percent by 2025 as a result of the strict new emission norms set down by the EU.
Czech Republic has highest number of job vacancies in EU
The Czech Republic has the highest number of vacancies in the European Union, according to Eurostat data.
In the fourth quarter of 2018 the ratio of vacancies to the overall number of jobs in the EU rose from 2.2 to 2.3 percent.
In the Czech Republic it rose by 0.1 percentage point to six percent, the highest figure in the EU. Second in line was Belgium and Germany with 3.4 percent, followed by Austria with 3.1 percent.
Weather forecast
Tuesday should be clear to partly cloudy, mostly dry around the country, with day temperatures between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius.
