News

The UK's Daily Mail newspaper has unearthed information from newly declassified archive files revealing that Terézia Javorská, the London-based director of the BBC World Service's Slovak section until 2005, was a Cold War spy for the notorious communist-era Czechoslovak StB or State Security Service. According to the files, she was recruited by an StB agent posted to London who met her at a cocktail party in the mid-1980s. The Daily Mail writes that security experts believe it to be the first known case of an agent from a foreign intelligence agency infiltrating the BBC since the start of the Cold War.

Prague’s Charles University is preparing a list of possible security measures for its buildings following a mass shooting at the Faculty of Arts last month that left 14 dead. Deans of individual faculties will receive a list of measures tailored to their faculties, the rector of the university, Milena Králíčková, said on Tuesday evening.

Regarding the coming semester at the Faculty of Arts, the rector said teaching would take place in alternative classrooms at other faculties and other institutions, as well as online.

Czechia have reached the semi-finals of ice hockey’s World Junior Championship in Sweden. The Czechs overcame the favourites Canada 3:2 on Tuesday after Oliver Bonk turned a strike by Jakub Štancl into his own net with only 11 seconds of the game remaining.

Czechia had taken a 2:0 lead earlier in the match only to see a determined Canadian turn on the pressure and peg them back to 2:2.

Heavy rain and snow are expected in the Šumava, the Krkonoše and the Jizera Mountains between Tuesday and Thursday. Between 60 and 80 millimetres of rain may fall in 48 hours, with around 30 centimetres of snow expected on mountain ridges, the Czech Hydro-Meteorological Institute said.

This precipitation and an expected thaw, as weather warms up mid-week, is expected to cause river levels to rise.