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Support for the Social Democrat leader has also come from the Vysočina branch of the party which on Saturday called on all five rebels to resign from their posts in the party leadership. The Vysočina regional branch also called for an extraordinary party conference to be held as soon as possible in order to clarify the party’s course in the wake of last week’s power struggle.

The 17th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival has just taken place in the capital of the central Vysočina region. Far and away the most important event of its kind in the country, it draws scores of directors from home and abroad and plays a key role in the thriving Czech documentary scene.

The Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival is having financial problems and has had to apply for emergency funding, the news website Lidovky.cz reported on Wednesday. The festival has applied for grants of CZK 1 million from the Jihlava Region and the city of Jihlava, where it is one of the biggest cultural events of the year. If it does not receive the money, it will have to make cuts to its programme, festival director Marek Hovorka said.

The police in Jihlava on Friday charged two men, aged 20, with the brutal murder of a 15-year-old schoolgirl. Another 18-year-old man has been charged with assisting the murderers and failing to report the crime. The police believe the girl came to apartment of one of the men willingly last Friday night; for reasons yet to be established. She was overpowered and thrown out of the window. The girl survived the fall so the men dragged her in again and strangled her. They later dumped the body at a waste disposal site outside the town where it was discovered earlier this week. The two 20-year-old men, who were placed in custody, face up to 20 years in jail while their 18-year-old accomplice could land a 4-year sentence.

Police have sifted through some 300 tonnes of garbage at a waste site in the area of Jihlava since Tuesday evening, idnes and Tn.cz report, speculating that officials may have found the body of a 15-year-old girl missing in the area since mid-March. According to sources, she was last seen leaving a local discotheque with another individual. Both idnes and Tn.cz report that police had uncovered key evidence in the case and were holding a suspect who has allegedly already confessed to the girl’s murder.

Christian Democrats are discussing strategies to gain higher voter support at a one-day programme conference in Jihlava on Saturday. Party chair Pavel Bělobrádek said the group should pursue the concept of social market economy, and present itself as an alternative to the policies of the current government. The conference is also expected to alter the name of the party which now in full reads the Christian-Democrat Union – the Czechoslovak People’s Party. The group failed to win seats in the lower house in the 2010 general elections but most polls suggest it has a good chance of crossing the 5-percent threshold to enter the house.

A memorial plaque dedicated to Czech servicemen who fought in Britain’s RAF during the Second World War was unveiled in a Catholic church in Jihlava on Friday. The plaque bears the names of 22 men from Jihlava and the surrounding area who served as pilots, bomber crews or ground personnel. There are some 1,500 WWII veterans living in the Czech Republic today, according to a veteran association.

The Basilica of St. Procopius in Třebíč is one of only 12 places in the Czech Republic inscribed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. In this edition of Spotlight we’ll give you a taste of some of what makes the 12th century structure such a marvel.

A court in Brno on Friday ordered a hospital in Třebíč to pay record compensation of 3.5 million crowns to the husband and children of a 36-year-old woman who died there in 2006 during the delivery of her third child. The court upheld a review of the case by the Health Ministry which said the woman died of internal bleeding the doctors failed to notice. Criminal proceedings against the doctors had been dropped but the judge said on Friday that based on the new verdict, charges against the maternity ward’s head doctor might be raised again.

Třebíč born Czech actor Milan Reihs died on Monday aged 77, his colleagues announced on Tuesday. Reihs spent much of his career in the theatre, performing in Jihlava, Olomouc and later in Prague. He also acted in numerous on-screen projects, including “Je treba zabít Sekala” (1998), “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones” TV series and the 1984 Miloš Forman film “Amadeus”. In 2006, he was awarded the Senior Prix Artists’ Foundation Award for his contribution to the theatre.