News

A lab for the production of the illicit drug pervetin, uncovered by the police on Wednesday in the region of Karlovy Vary, was capable of producing dozens of kilos of the methamphetamine worth tens of millions of crowns. The police commented it was not often they saw a facility of comparable size. Three people, reportedly of Vietnamese descent, were arrested and several kilos of the drug were seized. The Czech News Agency reported it took officers equipped with gasmasks two trips with a transport vehicle to remove chemicals from the facility. Early estimates suggest that more than 50 kilos of pervetin were produced at the site.

Hockey player Tomáš Slovák, bike rider David Pabiška and former cyclist Jan Smolík received the Czech Fair Play awards on Wednesday. Škoda Plzeň defenceman Slovák was honoured for admitting to the referee he had deflected a puck out of play during the decisive match of last year’s play-offs finals. David Pabiška, meanwhile, assisted an injured rider during last year’s Dakar Rally; he called a medical helicopter and waited with the injured Italian biker until it arrived. Former cyclist Jan Smolík, who won the international Peace Race event in 1964, received an award for his life-time commitment to fair play principles, the organizers from the Czech Olympic Committee said.

A large exhibition of works by the graphic artist Bohuslav Reynek opens at Prague’s Waldstein Riding School on Wednesday. Entitled Reynek – A Genius We Were Supposed to Forget, the exhibition presents some 80 graphic pieces by the artist who lived in seclusion in his country house until his death in 1971. Heavily influenced by Catholicism, Reynek’s work was not publicly displayed after the 1948 Communist takeover; his first exhibition under communism was held in 1964. The Prague retrospective, organized by a Czech advertising firm and curated by Reynek’s granddaughter Veronika, runs until the end of July.

Around 1.07 million people in the Czech Republic, or 10.2 percent of the country’s population, suffer from some form of disability, the Czech Statistical Office said. Since 2007, the percentage of people with disabilities has increased by 0.4 percentage points; however, the average period during which people suffer from disabilities has shortened from 13.6 years in 2007 to 12.4 years. The figures, based on patients’ registers, also suggest an increase in the number of people with innate disabilities; in 2007, 12 percent of disabled people were born with their handicap while this year, it was 14 percent.