News

Two retail associations have decided to stop selling edible products containing the psychoactive substance HHC, the Czech News Agency reported on Wednesday. The products will be withdrawn from sale by the end of the week, the head of the Association of Safe Vending Machines, Vojtěch Ulman, told the agency. The national anti-drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil recently called on sellers to withdraw these products but no retailers have complied until now.

Over the past year, about a hundred people have ended up in hospital after ingesting products containing HHC. Health Minister Vlastimil Válek said on social media site X on Tuesday that he wants to include HHC on the list of banned substances. Anti-drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil, on the other hand, thinks regulation is a better solution than an outright ban, and wants the bill on psychomodulating substances, currently stuck in parliament, to be adopted faster. This would see a ban on advertising for products containing HHC, and would mean they could not be sold in vending machines or to children under the age of 18.

The lower house of the Czech parliament has supported changing the definition of rape in Czech law to sex without consent rather than sex by force or physical coercion. The government proposal to redefine rape using a consent-based definition received support on Wednesday in the Chamber of Deputies in its preliminary reading. Another change proposed by the draft law is that all sexual activity with children under 12 years of age always be treated as rape or assault, rather than the less serious criminal offence of sexual abuse. The bill is now awaiting review by the Constitutional-Legal committee.

Flood alerts were still in place in five spots on the Elbe River in the Hradec Králové and Pardubice regions on Wednesday morning. However, all five were at the lowest of the three alert levels and the water levels were gradually receding.

Rivers and streams in eastern Bohemia reached flood levels due to heavy rains overnight between Sunday and Monday, even reaching the highest of the three levels in several places.

The minister for European affairs, Martin Dvořák of the Mayors, will not have his own commissioner for euro adoption, Prime Minister Petr Fiala of the Civic Democrats said on Tuesday evening after a special meeting of coalition government leaders.

The previous day Mr. Dvořák had announced that he was naming economist Petr Zahradník in that position. Mr. Fiala said Mr. Zahradník would continue in his role as an advisor to Mr. Dvořák.

Government leaders the Civic Democrats are the only grouping in the five-party coalition opposed to the adoption of the single European currency at present.