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President Petr Pavel and the speakers of both houses of the Czech Parliament, Markéta Adamová Pekarová and Miloš Vyštrcil, took part in a memorial ceremony at the site of the World War II concentration camp for Roma at Lety in South Bohemia.
Mr. Pavel told the assembled that there was still room for improvement in the majority society’s relations with the Roma minority. He was the first Czech president to attend the annual event since Václav Havel in the 1990s.
A large pig farm was built at the site in the 1970s. After years of discussion it was bought by the state in 2018; the pig farm has since been razed and a memorial to victims of the Roma and Sinti Holocaust in Bohemia is due to be unveiled next year.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala says there is no possibility of change to essential elements in the government’s austerity package aimed at reducing the state budget deficit. Speaking on Czech Television on Sunday, Mr. Fiala said the cabinet would not give in to pressure and would only make alterations to its plans if there were mistakes in the drafts.
The package, published on Thursday, envisages savings of CZK 94 billion this year alone. These are to be achieved via the discontinuation of non-investment subsidies, taxation changes, lay-offs and other moves.
The government is also planning significant reform to the state old-age pension system.
Opposition leaders ANO would have come first in general elections held at the turn of May with 30.5 percent, suggests a poll by the Kantar agency published on Sunday.
The survey indicates that the three parties in the Together bloc, who are in government with the Mayors and the Pirates, would together have taken 25 percent of the vote; all five groupings together would have picked up 43 percent of the vote.
A Kantar analyst said the poll suggested the current government coalition would be unable to form a majority again.
The survey indicates the Civic Democrats would get 17 percent, the Pirates 11 percent and Freedom and Direct Democracy 9 percent. The Mayors, TOP 09, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats are all just above the 5 percent threshold.
Czech Radio has increased its listener numbers in the last five years by around 100,000 to 1.69 million people a day, according to audience measuring by Radioprojekt cited on Sunday by the Czech News Agency.
The media organisation’s stations – which include Radio Prague International – grew their share of the market by 4.2 percentage points to 27.7 percent in the half decade.
Czech Radio will celebrate its centenary this coming Thursday, May 18.
The all-female Czech group Vesna came 10th in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest with My Sister’s Crown in Liverpool on Saturday night. It was Czechia’s second best result in the history of the international competition, after a sixth-place finish for Mikolas Josef with Lie to Me in 2018.
The 2023 Eurovision was won by Swedish singer Loreen, for the second time, with Tattoo.
Sparta Prague beat traditional rivals Slavia Prague 3:2 at home on Saturday evening to put them in a good position to win their first Czech soccer league title since 2014.
Sparta scored the winning goal from a penalty in the seventh minute of additional time in what was the fourth Prague derby of the season.
The result leaves them five points ahead of Slavia in what is called the “superstructure”, a system where the league is divided into three mini-leagues for the final part of the season.
It should be mainly overcast in Czechia on Monday, with an average high temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. Similar weather is expected for much of the week.
Bass-baritone Boris Prýgl ranks among the most talented Czech young opera singers. One of the finalists of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, Prýgl has performed at the Slovak National Theatre and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He is now a guest singer at the National Theatre Opera.
The US-born writer and intellectual Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, wife of the “father of Czechoslovakia” Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, died on 13 May 1923 at the Lány presidential residence near Prague
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