Copyright (c) 2010 Radio Prague (Cesky Rozhlas 7 - Radio Praha)
News Saturday, August 21st, 2010
By: Ian Willoughby
* A ceremony was held in Prague on Saturday honouring the victims of
the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968.
* An audience member killed himself by falling on to the stage during a
concert by the Czech musician Marketa Irglova and her group The Swell
Season.
* Olympic champion Barbora Spotakova has announced that she will be
trained by javelin legend Jan Zelezny.
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Victims of 1968 Soviet-led invasion remembered at Prague ceremony
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A ceremony was held at the Czech Radio building in Prague on Saturday
honouring the victims of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia on
August 21, 1968. Warsaw Pact troops had entered the country during the
previous night, halting the liberalisation reforms of the Prague
Spring. Speaking at Saturday's memorial ceremony, the chairman of the
Senate, Premysl Sobotka, paid tribute to the Czechoslovak Radio
journalists who had kept the public informed about the invasion; he
said that listeners did not hear the truth again until 21 years later,
when the communist regime fell. Over 100 people were killed in the
violence that followed the occupation. The greatest losses were
recorded at the Czech Radio building on Vinohradska St, which had
become a rallying point for resistance.
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Audience member commits suicide during show by Irglova and group Swell
Season
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A member of the audience committed suicide during a concert by the
Czech musician Marketa Irglova and her group The Swell Season in the US
city of Saratoga on Thursday night. The man jumped from the roof that
covered the venue's stage, landing on the podium and dying instantly.
The band extended their sympathies to the victim's family and friends
in an internet post. Marketa Irglova and The Swell Season's Glen
Hansard won an Academy Award for best original song for their
composition Falling Slowly in February 2008, just days before her 20th
birthday. She is the only Czech woman to have ever won an Oscar.
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Three injured when train hits car
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Three people were injured when the car they were driving in was hit by
a train at a level crossing near Hradec Kralove in east Bohemia on
Saturday. One of the three is in a serious condition, a spokesman for
Czech Railways told reporters. The level crossing did not have gates,
but a system of traffic lights was working at the time of the
collision, he said. Such accidents are not uncommon in the Czech
Republic. Last month five people died in 15 collisions at level
crossings around the country.
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Javelin legend Zelezny to train compatriot Spotakova
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Olympic javelin champion Barbora Spotakova has announced that she will
be trained next season by the greatest athlete in the history of the
discipline, her Czech compatriot Jan Zelezny. Spotakova holds the
women's record in the javelin, while Zelezny, who retired in 2006,
holds the men's record. The move brings to an end the 29-year-old's
association with trainer Rudolf Cerny, and comes after a season in
which she suffered injury problems and came third at the European
Championships in Barcelona.
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Ujfalusi: return to national squad out of question
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Tomas Ujfalusi has ruled out returning to the Czech football squad. The
defender, who is 32, captained the team before quitting international
soccer after being criticised for going out drinking after a game. The
Czechs' team manager Vladimir Smicer recently asked Ujfalusi to
reconsider his decision to retire, and there were press reports that he
could make a comeback. However, the Atletico Madrid player has scotched
that suggestion, telling reporters he had not given the matter any
thought. The Czech team have largely failed to impress since Michal
Bilek was appointed trainer last October. Their campaign to reach the
2012 European Championship begins in a few weeks' time.
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Czech team take bronze at Canoe Sprint World Championships
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The Czech Republic took bronze in the K4 1000 metres category at the
ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Poland's Poznan on Saturday,
when Ondrej Horsky, Jan Soucek, Daniel Havel and Jan Sterba finished
behind France and last year's winners Belarus. The Czech team had
previously taken two bronze medals at the European Championships.
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Nearly 1,400 animal attacks on people recorded in 2009
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There were nearly 1,400 recorded cases of people being attacked by
animals in the Czech Republic last year, according to figures just
released by the Institute of Health Information and Statistics. Around
three quarters of the cases involved dogs biting people. There were no
fatalities, though 11 deaths have been caused by dog bites in the Czech
Republic since the year 2000. A quarter of the victims of animal
attacks ended up in hospital; a similar percentage were children.
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Dvorak Prague Festival begins at Prague's Rudolfinum
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The third annual Dvorak Prague Festival got underway in Prague on
Friday with a performance of the composer's New World Symphony by the
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the city's Rudolfinum. The festival,
which runs for two weeks, features 16 concerts, most of them at the
same venue's Dvorak Hall. All in all, 12 pieces by Antonin Dvorak are
being performed; the programme also includes work by other composers.
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Manic Street Preachers headline second night of Trutnov festival
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The Welsh group Manic Street Preachers performed to thousands of fans
at one of the Czech Republic's biggest rock music events, the Open Air
Music Festival in the east Bohemian town of Trutnov, on Friday night.
Other performers included The Glitter Band and the Czech artists DG 307
and Michal Hruza. The Trutnov festival first took place in 1987, two
years before the fall of the communist regime. This year over 100
groups and solo musicians are performing on four stages over four
nights.
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Weather
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It should remain hot in the coming days, with temperatures of up to 30
degrees Celsius. Forecasters say we can expect a good deal of sunshine
and occasional storms.
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Articles posted on www.radio.cz today
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Special
The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia through the eyes of Soviet troops
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August 21 marks the anniversary of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
by the Soviet Union and other communist countries. The occupation
crushed an attempt to reform the communist regime, and drove the
country into two decades of hard-line rule. What that all meant to the
people of Czechoslovakia has been looked at many times. In our special
programme today, we look at August 1968 from another perspective: that
of the occupiers.
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/130962
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