News: Monday, April 22nd, 2024

Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti at Lety to be inaugurated on Tuesday

A Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti will be inaugurated on Tuesday at the site of a former concentration camp in Lety, south Bohemia. Some 1, 300 Roma passed through the camp between 1942 and 1943 and more than 300 died there, mostly women and children. The memorial will open to the public on May 12.

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. The inauguration ceremony will be attended by Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, cultural figures and members of the Roma minority.

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

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.

President Pavel’s efforts to mediate pension reform fail

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.

President nominates two more constitutional court judges

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.

Justice Minister wants to see more alternative punishments, fewer prison sentences

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.

Loves of a Blonde actress Hana Brejchová dies at 77

Czech actress Hana Brejchová, who is perhaps best known for the title role in Milos Forman’s 1960s film Loves of a Blonde, has died at the age of 77. Brejchová was still a secondary school student when she got the part in the Czechoslovak New Wave classic.

The sister of better known actress Jana Brejchová, her other roles included a part in The Most Beautiful Age, while Forman also cast her in Amadeus.

Kupka work sets new Czech art auction record

A painting by František Kupka has become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Czechia. Conception/Danae, which was created in 1930, was sold for CZK 115 million in Prague on Sunday evening.

With the buyer’s premium the total price reached CZK 126.5 million, ensuring it edged past the previous record seller, Old Prague Motif by Bohumil Kubišta.

Weather forecast

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