Czechs bid final farewell to Karel Gott, Eastern Europe's Sinatra

• Czechs bid a final farewell on Friday to singer Karel Gott, standing in line for hours to pay their respects to the man whose popularity in former communist Europe earned him the nickname the "Sinatra of the East". "I will always remember him because he was part of my life for 57 years and that's why I want to pay him respects for everything he gave us in his songs," Iva Skudrnpova, a pensioner from Prague, said. Unlike many other Czech artists, Gott performed at home and abroad after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.