News

A drunk flight attendant delayed a scheduled Travel Service flight from Corfu island to Brno by five hours on Monday night, Czech Television reported. According to passengers the flight attendant had problems announcing where the flight was bound and them locked himself into the flight cabin with the crew for twenty minutes. We were just sitting there, not knowing what was going on, one of the passengers told Czech TV. A spokesperson for Travel Service later apologized for the incident, saying the flight attendant had been sacked and the company was pressing charges.

Zlín governor Jiří Čunek has issued further measures in connection with the incidence of African swine fever in the region. The measures include a ban prohibiting people from entering fields and wooded areas where infected wild boar may be present. These areas will only be accessible to hunters and veterinary officials who are working to contain the spread of the disease by gradually eliminating all the wild boar in the region. There are believed to be some 400 animals in the given area. A 45km long electric fence has been put up to prevent them migrating.

A plaque will be unveiled in Prague to the Czech composer Jaromir Weinberger on the fiftieth anniversary of his death on August 8, 1967. Jaromir Weinberger is best known for his opera Švanda Dudák (Shvanda the Bagpiper). It premiered in Prague in 1929 and made him famous overnight. Švanda Dudák was the first Czech opera since Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride to be widely performed internationally. It was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1931 and the Polka and Fugue from the opera soon became a popular concert piece. Besides operas his works include orchestral and chamber music. Weinberger fled to the US in 1939 where he spent the rest of his life.

Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, who was questioned by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday in connection with leaks from ongoing police investigations, said he was deeply concerned by this phenomenon, calling it a “cancer” in the system. He said it was evident that some media had insight into such cases which was totally unacceptable and could hurt innocent people. He said that while he respected the right of journalists to protect their sources the matter should be investigated by the secret services and measures taken to prevent such leaks. A parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the matter after leaked telephone recordings revealed that a journalist had consulted ANO leader Andrej Babiš about the possibility of using information from an ongoing investigation so as to damage his political rivals.