News

Czech tennis duo Kateřina Siniaková and Barbora Krejčíková have advanced into the Wimbledon women’s doubles final after beating Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok and Latvia’s Jeļena Ostapenko 2:6 2:6 on Friday. They will face Belgium's Elise Mertens and China's Zhang Shuai in the doubles final on Sunday.

The pair will be playing for their fifth Grand Slam title and their second from Wimbledon, having defeated Nicole Melichar and Květa Peschke in the final four years ago at the 2018 Wimbledon Championships.

A concert by the Prague Philharmonia took place in the capital's Rudolfinum on Friday evening to mark the start of the Czech EU Council presidency. Prime Minister Petr Fiala and President Miloš Zeman spoke before the start of the concert. Due to the number of officials present, there were several members of the security service among the audience.

The evening in the packed Dvořák Hall opened with the Czech and EU anthems and continued with a concert program that included works by Czech composers, combining classical pieces with jazz and Czech folk music. A new piece for orchestra and piano titled Stronger than Yesterday, composed especially for the Czech presidency by pianist Tomáš Kačo, had its world premiere at the concert. The composition, described by music critics as an original fusion of classical, jazz and traditional Roma music, includes a line from President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's favourite song Ach synku, synku. The concert was symbolically closed by the well-known piece Modlitby pro Marta, arranged for orchestra by the conductor Jan Kučera and sung by the opera singer Jiří Brückler.

Members of the government coalition party Top 09 said at a press conference on Friday that Czechia should once again start focusing on the goal of adopting the euro as this would revive the economy. Deputy Chairman of the Budget Committee, Miloš Nový, stated that adopting the euro would mean an emphasis on budgetary responsibility, which would prevent Czechia from going down the road of deep budget deficits. He also said that he thinks inflation in Czechia would currently be lower if it had the euro.

TOP 09 wants to talk to Czech citizens not only about the euro, but also about the positive aspects of the EU. However, the Cabinet has no plans to adopt the euro during its current term.

The Pilsen District Court has acquitted thirty-four-year-old Jan Jungmann of spreading disinformation about Covid-19, the Czech news site iDnes reports. The lawsuit, for which he was facing up to eight years in prison, centred around some comments he made on Facebook in February 2021 during the state of emergency, in which he claimed, among other things, that medical staff at the Pilsen University Hospital were deliberately killing patients with Covid in order to “boost their numbers”. The court ruled on Friday that what he did was not a crime, but the judgment is not final as there may still be an appeal.

The court said it was true that the man was spreading false information, but according to Senate President Josef Prach, Jungmann's claims were so absurd and detached from reality that they did not cause concern among the population. Jungmann defended himself by saying he was in a bad mental state at the time he wrote the comments and that he felt afraid when he read articles about Covid and didn't know what to believe.