News

The Central Drought Commission will meet Monday to discuss the country’s severe drought. It is the commission’s first meeting this year and will focus on the current hydrological situation and conditions in individual regions, where regional drought commissions are also being convened.

According to the InterSucho drought monitoring portal, the current period of soil moisture shortages is the longest on record. About 30 percent of Czechia has been experiencing a lack of soil moisture since the beginning of the year.

The renewed National Drought Coalition, headed by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, also met last week. It called for a map identifying 500 to 1,000 areas where water is disappearing fastest. The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute has since identified about 1,000 cadastral areas most at risk of drought.

On Monday the Czech Republic’s ambassadors from around the world gathered in Prague at the Czernin Palace, the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for an annual week-long series of meetings. Officials said the conference would focus on reinforcing Czechia’s security and prosperity within the framework of the European Union, the development of international partnerships and the support of the country’s interests abroad.

In an opening speech, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš told delegates that Czechia supported rapid expansion of the European Union to include Western Balkans states. He said he hoped Montenegro would become the 28th member of the bloc in 2028.

China is continuing to attempt cyber-espionage in Czechia, the head of the National Cyber and Information Security Agency, Lukáš Kintr, said on the online show Noon with Moravec on Sunday. Mr. Kintr said the state should be cautious about increasing its dependence on Chinese technologies and should have a central “plan B” in place in case these technologies cease to function.

The annual report of the National Cyber and Information Security Agency states that the number of recorded cyber attacks fell last year; however, their sophistication increased.

The Czech government said last year that hackers from a group linked to China’s security services had infiltrated the systems of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is 90 years since ago the first television signal in the Czech lands was received at an observation tower on the mountain Děčínský Sněžník in North Bohemia, the Czech News Agency reported. The signal, broadcast from the Olympic Games in Berlin, was received on 24 August 1936 by Mathias Färber, a teacher at a local technical college. He had built the receiver himself.

At the time, Nazi Germany wanted to impress the world with previously unseen live television broadcasts from the Olympics. Using Telefunken equipment, the German postal service transmitted more than 70 hours of black-and-white coverage to public screening halls in Berlin and Potsdam.