PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech government survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote on Thursday after the opposition challeneged its widening budget deficit and raised conflict of interest concerns over populist billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.
Only 83 opposition lawmakers in Parliament’s 200-seat lower house voted to dismiss the three-party coalition government. At least 101 votes were needed to bring it down following a three-day debate.
The opposition parties that called the vote condemned the government's draft 2027 budget, which projects a deficit of 386 billion koruna ($18 billion), the second-largest in Czech history. This year’s deficit is expected to reach 310 billion koruna.
Many economists and opposition lawmakers have criticized the proposed deficit at a time when the Czech central bank expects the economy to grow by 2.7% next year.
The government says the spending is necessary to boost investment and fund priorities, such as health care, pensions and public-sector salaries.
Babiš, one of the country's richest people, has faced criticism that he has not done enough to resolve potential conflicts of interest between his private dealings and his political status.
After his ANO (YES) movement won last October’s election, Babiš has moved about 200 of companies under his Agrofert conglomerate to an independent trust fund to comply with conflict-of-interest legislation, without which his businesses would be ineligible for Czech and European Union subsidies.
His investment in the health care sector has not been affected by the move.
The European Commission said last month that the trust arrangement did not sufficiently resolve the problem, saying Babiš remains in a potential conflict of interest and suspended some payments to Agrofert.
The opposition has also criticized Babiš for his verbal attacks on independent courts, judges and media.
Babiš has formed a governing coalition with two small political groups whose agenda includes reducing support for Ukraine and rejecting some key EU policies.
FILE - Czech Republic's Prime Minister Andrej Babis talks to journalists as he arrives for the EU summit in Brussels, on June 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Marius Burgelman, File)
The white Dallas police officer convicted of killing a Black man in his apartment that she mistook for her own was granted parole Thursday after serving seven years of her 10-year sentence.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, which is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, rejected Amber Guyger's initial parole request in 2024 but approved her case over the objections of victim Botham Jean 's family the first time she was eligible for release.
Guyger, 38, was convicted of murder in the 2018 killing of 26-year-old Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, who had been eating a bowl of ice cream when Guyger entered his home and shot him. Guyger was arrested three days after the shooting and was fired before her murder trial.
She had faced up to life in prison or as little as two years. Prosecutors initially asked the jury for a sentence of 28 years.
The shooting drew widespread attention because of the strange circumstances and because it was one in a string of shootings of Black men by white police officers. Guyger’s sentencing hearing also included a stunning courtroom scene when Jean’s brother and the Black judge presiding over the case embraced the sobbing Guyger.
At trial, Guyger said that after a long shift at work and still in uniform, she walked up to Jean’s apartment — which was on the fourth floor, directly above hers on the third — and found the door unlocked. She said she thought the apartment was her own and that Jean was an intruder when she drew her service weapon and entered.
Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt said Thursday that Jean's family “strongly opposed this parole.”
“They stood up again and again to ask that the full sentence be served. A 10-year sentence was already a fraction of what was lost. Releasing Ms. Guyger after seven years makes that loss feel even smaller in the eyes of the system. It is not smaller,” Merritt said.
In 2024, a jury ordered Guyger to pay Jean's family nearly $100 million in a federal civil trial.
In granting her release, the board said it reviewed a “plethora” of information in her case.
The board said Guyger's record did not include a documented pattern of violent or assaultive arrests or convictions, and showed she completed programs in her prison treatment plan to get and keep a job when she is released.
The board said the state prison system will determine when she is released. Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
FILE - Fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger looks toward her attorney before proceedings in her murder trial in Dallas on Sept. 25, 2019. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via AP, Pool, File)
