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The Labour Ministry has finalised its draft pension reform law, the head of the ministry Marian Jurečka announced at a press conference on Friday. It will see a number of changes to pensions as they currently stand, including increasing the retirement age according to life expectancy, setting the minimum pension at 20 percent of the average wage, and early retirement for physically demanding professions.

The opposition ANO party has criticised the plan for reducing the number of jobs that count as physically demanding and have said they want an analysis of the impact of the changes.

Police are investigating a leak of 25 tons of carbon dioxide from a tank in an industrial zone in Cheb as public endangerment due to negligence. The gas leak occurred on Thursday, creating a thick white mist near the ground. Two firefighters were injured during the intervention.

Carbon dioxide is dangerous for humans and can even cause death by suffocation at extreme concentrations. Symptoms of mild CO2 exposure may include headache and drowsiness. At higher levels, rapid breathing, confusion, increased cardiac output, elevated blood pressure and increased arrhythmias can occur.

Czech deputy ambassador to Moscow Jiří Čistecký is due to attend the funeral of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Friday. The last farewell to Navalny, who died two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony at the age of 47, will take place on Friday afternoon in Moscow.

Afterwards, the Kremlin critic will be buried at Borisovskoye Cemetery on the southern outskirts of the Russian capital. The burial takes place amid tight security measures and fears of a police crackdown.

The Czech state collected CZK 6.49 billion from motorway vignettes last year, up by nearly 11 percent year-on-year. The total number of vignettes sold in 2023 rose by almost 13 percent to 8,331,877, the state-owned enterprise Cendis, which manages the sale of electronic vignettes, said on Thursday. The sales are expected to grow even further this year, due to an increase in the price of vignettes from March.

Since the introduction of the online motorway vignette system in December 2020, sales of vignettes increases by about one million units each year. The most popular motorway stamps sold last year were the ten-day vignettes, followed by annual vignettes and monthly stamps.