News

Police are continuing the search for two young men who went missing at Lake Most after a powerful storm swept through the region on Tuesday. The men have been unaccounted for since then. During the storm, several people in the lake reportedly struggled to reach the shore. Divers, river police and firefighters are taking part in the search.

Clean up work is underway in many parts of north Bohemia, where heavy thunderstorms uprooted trees and damaged roofs on Tuesday evening. The fallen trees disrupted traffic on local roads and blocked several railway lines across the region. Some 1,600 households in the Česká Lípa region were still without electricity on Wednesday morning. Firefighters responded to around 140 storm-related incidents in the wake of the heat storms.

Former first lady Dagmar Havlová and the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 say they intend to preserve the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize after the Václav Havel Library announced it was withdrawing from its organization.

Havlová said the foundation aims to present the €60,000 award again this year and is in talks with all relevant partners. The library said it was pulling out because it can no longer use Václav Havel's name in the project's title after Havlová revoked her consent in June.

Established after Havel's death in 2011, the prize honors outstanding contributions to human rights in Europe and beyond. Since 2013, it has been awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Václav Havel Library and the Charter 77 Foundation.

A decision by the EU Council restricting the granting of temporary protection to Ukrainian refugees subject to military service obligations will reduce the number of newly arriving war refugees by tens of percent, according to Czech Interior Minister Lubomír Metnar (ANO). According to the Interior Ministry, 395,366 people currently hold temporary protection in the Czech Republic. Around 800 people arrived over the past week.

The new restrictions, which take effect on Wednesday, will apply only to new applicants for temporary protection. They will not affect people who have already received protection in the EU and are only extending their status. Displaced Ukrainians will have to prove that they meet military service requirements in order to obtain protection. For example, they may present a passport with an exit stamp from Ukrainian authorities showing that they left the country legally, or provide documents proving that they are fulfilling their military obligations or are exempt from them.

Farm animals in South Bohemia are seeking relief from extreme temperatures by sheltering in tree belts and stone barns. Some local farmers are letting cows, sheep, and horses graze in pastures at night and keeping them inside cooler buildings during the hottest parts of the day. The ongoing drought has reduced grass growth in meadows, forcing farmers to supplement their livestock’s diet with winter hay supplies. Water sources are also drying up, increasing costs for water transportation as well as electricity needed to cool the animals.

“We are concerned that the animals have nothing to eat because nothing is growing anywhere,” said Hana Šťastná, director of the Regional Agrarian Chamber of the South Bohemian Region.