News

It should be mainly sunny with temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius in the Czech Republic on Friday. Daytime highs are set to remain at around 30 degrees Celsius for much of the next week.

The funeral of Kamil Beneš, who was one of three Czech soldiers killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan earlier this month, has been held. The minister of defence, Lubomír Metnar, and the chief of staff of the Czech army, Aleš Opata, were among hundreds who attended the funeral mass in Hluboká nad Vltavou on Thursday morning. The service was preceded by a military flyby.

Corporal Beneš’s fellow soldier Martin Marcin was buried earlier this week. The funeral of the third of the slain soldiers, Patrik Štěpánek, will take place on Friday.

Czech senators have supported EU proposal to ban single-use plastic products, such as straws and cotton swabs, which can be replaced by financially affordable products made from other materials. After a long debate, senators have also approved lowering consumption of single use plastic cups and food containers.

The European Commission has recently proposed banning single-use plastic products and putting the burden of cleaning up waste on manufacturers in an attempt to reduce marine litter worldwide.

The proposal, which needs to be approved by all EU member states, also requires them to collect 90 percent of single-use plastic drink bottles by 2025 and manufacturers to help cover costs of waste management and clean-up.

A Czech truck driver who survived the disastrous collapse of a bridge in Italy’s Genoa will remain in hospital for five to seven days.

The 46-year-old man, who works for the Prague-based haulage company SPED-IT, has a broken nose, several broken ribs and bruised lungs, but is otherwise in a good condition.

At least 42 people were killed after the elevated motorway collapsed, with some vehicles plunging up to 90 metres to the ground below.