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President Petr Pavel and his wife Eva made an appearance at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Wednesday. According to the president’ s spokesperson Markéta Řeháková the aim of the visit was to highlight the importance of the festival, but the couple’s program was private. They attended, among other things, a screening of a sci-fi drama by young Czech filmmakers called Bod obnovy Restore Point .

The festival also welcomed two more VIP guests, film directors Davide Ferrario and Thomas Cailley. The Italian director and screenwriter Davide Ferrario will present Umberto Eco - The Library of the World, a film that takes us on a tour of Umberto Eco’s private library, guided by the author himself. The French director Thomas Cailley will present his film Animal Kingdom a sci-fi adventure drama in which people start mutating into other animal species.

All PET bottles in Czechia will have to have attached caps by July 2024 at the latest, according to a new piece of legislation which comes from the EU's directive on single-use plastics. The obligation will also apply to composite packaging such as tetrapack cartons for juice. The idea is to make it easier and more likely that the cap will be recycled along with the bottle. According to a survey of beverage manufacturers, thirteen percent of PET bottles are currently returned without caps.

The Spanish police have started investigating the Czech Deputy Minister of Justice Radomír Daňhel, news site Deník N reports. The Spanish authorities were alerted to Mr Daňhel's activities by the Czech watchdog website Kverulant, which accuses him of making his fortune by taking bribes from suppliers while he was working at the state-owned arms company Letecké opravny Malešice.

Mr Daňhel had or has shares in dozens of companies and owns 37 properties, including a hotel resort in the Spanish Canary Islands. According to Spanish law, Mr Daňhel has to prove to the local authorities that he acquired the money for the hotel resort legally.

The harvest of staple crops such as wheat, barley, oats and rye is expected to be lower this year compared to last, according to initial estimates by the Czech Statistical Office. The harvest is estimated to fall by 8.1 percent to 6.955 million tons, mostly because of a decrease of 4.4 percent in yield to 5.57 tons per hectare, and partly due to a decrease in the amount of land used to grow cereals, which fell by 3.9 percent to 1.249 million hectares.

Meanwhile, rapeseed production is expected to rise by 4.9 per cent year-on-year to 1.223 million tons. The amount of land used to grow rapeseed expanded by 10.5 percent to 380,000 hectares, so even with a 5.1 per cent lower year-on-year expected yield of 3.22 tons per hectare, the overall harvest is still estimated to be higher.