News

Former communist prime minister and minister of the interior Lubomír Štrougal has died at the age of  98, the CTK news agency reported. One of the symbols of Czechoslovakia’s “normalization” period,  Štrougal was a leading member of the ruling communist party for more than 30 years. He headed the federal government for close to two decades. A criminal complaint against Štrougal over the deaths of  91 people who were killed on the Iron Curtain trying to escape communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, was shelved on the grounds that he could no longer comprehend the charges against him.

The Office of the President has dismissed the claim that it had hired a private security agency which had been allowed to operate at Prague Castle with unrestricted access to its premises. The office denied the allegation in response to a statement made by the president-elect, Petr Pavel, who said on Friday that there were suspicions regarding a private security agency operating outside the normal security regime at the Castle.

President Miloš Zeman previously accused the head of the BIS intelligence service Michal Koudelka of ordering wiretaps of people in his inner circle, including economic adviser Martin Nejedlý, who is believed to have links to Russia. The president said at the time that he himself had been wiretapped within this operation.

Meteorologists have warned Czechs to brace for icy conditions this week. According to the Hydro Meteorological Office temperatures in the Sumava Mountains dropped to -29.8 degrees Celsius on Monday night. In the Jizerka Mountains they dropped to -22 degrees. Even in lower altitudes night time lows are expected to hover at around - 12 degrees. The icy weather is expected to last throughout the week.

Czechia is sending firefighters to Turkey which was hit by a strong earthquake in the night hours, with hundreds of casualties. A 68-strong specially trained rescue team including sniffer dogs, a structural engeneer and a doctor, headed for Turkey on Monday after the country accepted an offer of help. The Urban Search and Rescue Team is made up of firefighters from Prague and Moravia-Silesia. It has helped abroad on previous occasions, for example, in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020 after an explosion in the port that killed two hundred people and injured 6,000 others.

It was confirmed that a group of Czechs was in one of the Turkish provinces hit by the earthquake. According to the Czech Foreign Ministry, they are safe and the Czech Embassy in Ankara is in contact with them.