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A two-year-old Czech boy with a rare genetic disorder, whose treatment was paid for with public donations of more than 150 million crowns, underwent gene therapy in France on Wednesday. The child's parents announced that the procedure at a hospital in Montpellier had been successful and thanked the doctors for their care and the public for their support. Two-year-old Martin will now spend another two to three weeks in the hospital, before returning to Czechia if everything goes well.

The government has excluded the US company Westinghouse from the ongoing tender for the construction of a new unit at the Dukovany nuclear power plant. According to a statement issued by the government on Wednesday, Westinghouse did not fulfil the required tender conditions.

The government also said it was amending the ongoing tender with the remaining bidders, South Korea's KHNP and France's EDF, who will now be asked to make binding bids by mid-April for up to four new reactors in total to be built at the Dukovany and Temelín plants.

The Czech energy company CEZ will evaluate the bids and submit an evaluation report to the government for approval by the end of May.

A total of 57,000 people died in Czechia in the first six months of last year, which was five percent fewer than in the previous year and about the same number as in 2020, the Czech Statistics Office announced in a press release on Wednesday.

The three most common causes of death were cardiovascular diseases, including coronary heart disease, heart attack and brain stroke. There was a significant drop in deaths where Covid-19 was listed as the main cause, dropping from the fourth most common cause to the 18th.

Coronary heart disease has long been the most commonly reported cause of death in Czechia, with the exception of 2021, when it was replaced by Covid-19. Almost 7,600 people succumbed to it during the first six months of 2023, which was nine percent drop on the previous year.

The Czech government on Wednesday approved an increase in the Education Ministry’s budget by four million crowns, Education Minister Mikuláš Bek announced on X (formerly Twitter).

The ministry’s budget was initially set at CZK 269 billion this year, which is CZK 3.9 billion more than in the previous year.

According to the minister the money should be used mainly to to increase the salaries of university teachers and non-teaching staff in the regions.

Teachers unions in Czechia held a day-long warning strike in late November, seeking more money for the underfunded education sector.