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People in Czechia wagered more than one trillion crowns on gambling last year for the first time ever. Total bets reached CZK 1.07 trillion, up 8.8 percent year on year. Stakes grew across all major types of gambling except sports betting. Payouts also increased, rising 9.2 percent to one trillion crowns. Gambling operators paid CZK 22.8 billion in gambling tax, according to data from the Financial Administration. Technical games, mainly slot machines, continued to dominate, with bets totalling CZK 843.3 billion. The sharpest growth was recorded in live games such as roulette, dice and poker. The shift to online gambling also continued, with internet bets accounting for 71.5 percent of all wagers.

“No army can break the will of a nation that has decided to be free,” Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka told the UN Security Council on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He urged Moscow to end the war not as a sign of weakness, but of responsibility. Macinka compared today’s frontline in Ukraine to a new Berlin Wall and echoed Ronald Reagan’s 1987 call to tear it down. Addressing Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya and President Vladimir Putin, he said aggression rewards fear, not strength, and warned that appeasing it only delays further conflict.

American actor Leonardo DiCaprio is expected to arrive in Prague later this week to join the cast of What Happens at Night, a new feature directed by Martin Scorsese. The 83-year-old filmmaker reportedly reached the Czech capital in mid-February. The production also stars Jennifer Lawrence, Mads Mikkelsen and Patricia Clarkson. The Apple-backed film is based on a novel by American writer Peter Cameron. It follows an American couple seeking to adopt a child in a snowy European city, where strange hotel guests blur the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Ukraine received 1.96 million large-calibre artillery shells last year through the Czech ammunition initiative, National Security Advisor Hynek Kmoníček told senators on Monday. The figure is higher than the previously reported 1.8 million rounds and represents roughly 48 percent of all such deliveries to Ukraine in 2024. In the key 155mm calibre, the share reached 52 percent. The scheme, coordinated by Czechia in cooperation mainly with the Netherlands and Denmark, secures funding from partner countries rather than the Czech state budget. For this year, financing has so far been arranged for 880,000 rounds. Ukraine is currently seeking extended-range ammunition exceeding 30 kilometres, using between 3,000 and 8,000 shells daily, Kmoníček said.