News

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for Saturday is a photograph of comet Pons-Brooks taken by Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava. The picture was taken on Tuesday near the Slovak town of Revúca. According to the Czech Astronomical Society, Horálek's image is the 65th photograph taken by a Czech to be chosen by NASA for their Astronomy Picture of the Day since it began in 1995.

According to the accompanying explanation to the image, comet Pons-Brooks is a periodic visitor to the inner Solar System and less than 14 light-minutes away.

Being allowed to join NATO was a huge relief for Sweden, the Czech ambassador to Stockholm, Anita Grmelová, told the Czech News Agency in an interview. When Finland joined NATO, Sweden lost its largest bilateral partner to some extent, she said, with cooperation not working as well as it did before due to one of the countries being a NATO member while the other was not.

Sweden officially became a member of the alliance on Thursday, with Hungary being the last NATO member to ratify its membership. Both Sweden and Finland, which had been neutral countries during the Cold War, expressed interest in joining NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The head of Czechia’s Sokol gymnastics organisation, Hana Moučková, has resigned following revelations of large-scale bank and credit fraud by her personal assistant, the Czech News Agency reported on Saturday. There were media reports over the past week that she had been under pressure to resign from the heads of Sokol branches across Czechia. Her deputy, Martin Chlumský, will be temporarily entrusted with the management of the association.

In January, it was reported that Ms. Moučková's assistant had committed fraud worth at least 40 million crowns before committing suicide at Sokol's Prague HQ when this information came to light.

Marek Tesař, director of the Sokol office, also resigned on Saturday of his own volition, citing the treatment of Ms. Moučková by colleagues and the organisation as a whole as the reason.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala met with Slovak opposition leader Michal Šimečka at the Czech prime minister's official residence in Prague on Friday morning. Mr Šimečka, who is the leader of Slovakia's largest opposition party, Progressive Slovakia, related the message that Slovakia is more than just Prime Minister Fico and said that a large number of people in Slovakia have a pro-European and pro-Western mindset and want to help Ukraine. Relations between the two countries remain excellent, Mr Fiala wrote on social media site X after the meeting.

This meeting took place less than two days after the Czech government decided to suspend a planned joint consultation with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico's cabinet over their differing views on the Ukraine war.