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05/25/2023
The Czech National Ice Hockey Team lost 0:3 to the United States in the quarter-finals of the ice hockey world championships in Finland on Thursday, meaning the team is out of the competition.
Matt Coronato brought the Americans into the lead after scoring in the 13th minute when his shot got deflected twice to end up in the Czech net. Then, in the second half, defender Nick Perbix raised team USA’s lead up to 2:0. The final goal of the game came in the 50th minute when Cutter Gauthier hit the puck past Czechia’s goaltender Karel Vejmelka.
Despite a radical shakeup in the Czech team’s lines during the final minutes of the game, the team was unable to significantly disrupt the American defence.
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05/25/2023
Czechia’s President Petr Pavel said on Thursday that he would in principle be ready to wave the confidentiality obligation of his predecessor’s chancellor, Vratislav Mynář, the magazine Respekt reports. The statement was made in response to Czechia’s counter-intelligence service, BIS, asking for Mr Mynář to be relieved of the vow of secrecy in order to be able to investigate possible information leaks at Prague Castle during his tenure as head of the Office of the President.
Mr Pavel said that he has not yet been informed about whether Czech counterintelligence has sent such a request and that he is waiting for advice on how to proceed from the current head of security at the Office of the President, Mlada Princová. She has been looking into how things were approached regarding this issue during the previous administration.
According to Respekt and the daily Deník N, the previous president, Miloš Zeman, refused to wave the confidentiality obligation from Mr Mynář, which in turn prevented investigators from interrogating the former chancellor.
The whole investigation relates to statements made by the former president two years ago, when Mr Zeman told the daily Blesk that he had been visited by a BIS officer several years before who told him that the head of the counter-intelligence service, Michal Koudelka, had ordered that the phones of people close to him be tapped. Mr Zeman said that since he does not have a phone and uses those of his associates, the phone tapings are also related to him.
Mr Koudelka subsequently said that no high constitutional officials had been tapped during his tenure. The Standing Oversight Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, responsible for checking BIS procedures, investigated the former president’s allegations last year and reached the conclusion that there is no evidence for the counter-intelligence service having done anything illegal in this matter.
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05/25/2023
New classes could be set up in Czech high schools, the country’s head of government Petr Fiala said on Thursday, after meeting with representatives of the association of Czechia’s regions together with Education Minister Mikuláš Bek. Those institutions that have sufficient capacities would set up these classes which would in turn be focused on teaching subjects that are currently most in demand, according to the prime minister.
The meeting was held in light of ongoing problems related to Czech students who are finishing elementary school and are not able to subsequently secure a place in the country’s secondary education institutions, Czech Television reports. The issue is in-part caused by the current group of students entering secondary education having been born at a time with higher than usual birth-rates.
The prime minister said that the situation varies depending upon region, but that especially in Prague and Brno, as well as in the Central Bohemian Region, grammar schools are currently unable to cope with the high numbers of applicants. He said that he wants both a short-term and long-term solution to what is apparently a systemic problem. The former should include filling classes to maximum capacity.
Suggestions have also been made that the current admissions system for Czech high schools be digitised. However, the education minister said that it may be risky to launch such a system too soon before it has been properly prepared and that the situation will become clearer around September. He added that the current problem is more of a logistical issue rather than a problem caused by lack of financing.
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05/25/2023
Temperatures are expected to reach around 20 degrees Celsius on Friday with partially overcast skies.
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05/25/2023
Eva Perglerová, a dentist from the town of Přeštice in Western Bohemia, became the third ever Czech woman to successfully ascend the world highest mountain – Mount Everest – after reaching its peak on Wednesday morning, news site Novinky.cz reports citing her friend Patrik Pátek.
Ms Perglerová was among a group of 27 mountaineers who took part in the ascent. Before reaching the peak of the 8,849m high mountain she spent two months in the Himalayas to get used to the local climate. Mr Pátek said that she is now on her way back and should return to Czechia this weekend. The mayor of her hometown said that it’s preparing to celebrate when she comes back.
A total of 16 Czechs have so far managed to reach the peak of Mount Everest, of which three are women. The first female to do so was Klára Kolouchová in 2007.
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Head of grammar schools association criticises system of accepting students into secondary education
05/25/2023The current system of accepting students who have finished elementary school and are moving onto high school study is badly set up, according to the chairwoman of the country’s association of grammar school headmasters (AŘG), Renata Schejbalová. In a Thursday interview, she told Czech Radio that it is lacking in flexibility and speed, noting that many students who are just finishing ninth grade have still not been informed about whether they have been accepted into one of the high schools they applied for. She said that the exact number of students who did not get into their chosen school will not be clear until September.
Mrs Schejbalová said that her association has long proposed a system wherein students could prioritise among the applications they send to schools that they wish to be accepted into. If they were to pass the entry exams into their first school of choice, they would then be accepted, thus opening up the spaces into the lower-priority schools for other students that would otherwise be held back until the student with the highest score makes a decision.
She said that the Ministry of Education is currently discussing a test run of this proposed system during next year’s entry examination period.
The current lack of spaces for students at high schools was also criticised by Czechia’s president, Petr Pavel, in an interview for news site Deník.cz earlier this week. The country’s head of state said that the government and regions failed to address the problem sufficiently and that it was necessary to come up with a solution that will fix the problem soon.
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05/25/2023
Czech police cars are being outfitted with a new online system that will be able to identify whether a targeted vehicle has a valid technical inspection pass as well as whether it is on its search list, Pavel Doležal from the Police Presidium told the Czech News Agency on Thursday.
He said that policemen have been testing the system since the autumn of last year and that no fewer than 600 police vehicles will be outfitted with the new gadget by the end of next month. The system enables police cars to identify the registration numbers on vehicles driving in front and behind them across a width of three lanes. It then checks the registration number with its online database of both legally owned and stolen cars.
The new technology will make it possible for policemen to check other vehicles on the road without having to conduct checks on random vehicles.
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05/25/2023
RegioJet owner Radim Jančura is looking for a strategic investor for his company, the daily Hospodářské Noviny reported on Thursday. The paper writes that major state railway companies from France (SNCF), Austria (ÖBB) and Italy (FS Italiane Group), as well as the German bus travel company Flixbus, are all interested in purchasing the Czech company. According to an investment banker who the paper cited saying that he has been acquainted with the possible transaction, negotiations are already at an advanced stage.
RegioJet is a major provider of passenger rail and bus transport in Czechia with its trains and busses transporting millions of clients to destinations across Europe annually.
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05/25/2023
Prime Minister Petr Fiala met with the governor of the Czech National Bank, Aleš Michl, to discuss the inflation situation in the country on Thursday. Mr Fiala subsequently said that both agree on the need to continue the fight against rising costs and that it is necessary to substantially lower the current inflation levels.
The government announced a major budget restructuring earlier in May which is supposed to cut next year’s deficit by CZK 94.1 billion. Meanwhile, the country’s central bank raised interest rates, a common anti-inflationary measure, to 7 percent last year. A proposal to raise it further, to 7.25 percent, was voted down by its council earlier this month. Ahead of the government’s budgetary reforms announcement, Mr Michl said that the bank would have to combat the inflationary impulse caused by the state’s rising deficit.
Inflation breached double digit numbers last February and climbed as high as 18 percent in September. However, it has been falling January, with the year-on-year inflation rate in April lying at 12.7 percent, down by more than 2 percent when compared to the previous month.
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05/25/2023
The US on-demand streaming service Netflix intends to take action against the sharing of user accounts in Czechia, thus preventing losses of up to six billion dollars a year, news site E15 reports. Netflix users will receive an email reminding them that Netflix accounts are intended for one household only, but it will be possible to add another user to an account in Czechia for an additional CZK 79 per month. The exact date when this will happen has not yet been disclosed.
Similar measures have already been carried out in other countries such as the US and Canada.
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