News

Czechia has sent a Blackhawk helicopter equipped with a Bambi bucket and three firefighters to North Macedonia to help contain the forest fires that have been raging in the Negrevo and Kumanevo districts for three days now. One person died in the blaze and several villages have had to be evacuated. Extreme temperatures and strong winds in the Western Balkans are complicating the rescue effort. The Czech emergency team left for the Macedonian capital Skopje on Wednesday evening and joined the rescue effort on Thursday.

Thursday should be partly cloudy with scattered showers and heat storms in the afternoon hours. Day temperatures should range between 24 and 29 degrees Celsius, possibly as high as 32 degrees in Moravia.

Countess Diana Phipps Sternberg, a member of the old Czech nobility, has died in Vienna at the age of 88. The Committee of Goodwill - Olga Havel Foundation, which she actively supported for many years, paid tribute to her memory, saying she had been the driving force behind many of its charity projects.

Diana Sternberg was 12 years old when her family fled from communist Czechoslovakia. She lived in various corners of the world and became a renowned interior designer. After returning to her homeland in 1990 she worked at the Office of the President under Václav Havel, where she chiefly focused on the interiors at Prague Castle and Lány Chateau, as well as founding the Committee of Goodwill with Olga Havlová.

The South Bohemia Region will launch an online medical emergency service for both children and adults that will be available 24 hours a day, starting on August 1, the governor’s office announced on its website. South Bohemia is the first region in the Czech Republic to offer this service, in response to growing complaints about a lack of general practitioners outside of the big cities. Due to a shortage of GPs in smaller towns and villages it is proving increasingly difficult to maintain emergency services in many areas. The online emergency service will be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, free of charge. The costs, amounting to around 14 million crowns a year, will be covered by the region.