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12/17/2023
The coalition government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala would receive a grade of C minus from the public if they were to be assessed according to the country's school grading system, a survey by the Median agency conducted for Czech Radio's station Radiožurnál suggests. While people rated the cabinet's foreign policy highly, they were most disgruntled about the high inflation the country has experienced this year.
The government is currently halfway through its four-year mandate.
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12/17/2023
In their first television debate since June, Prime Minister Petr Fiala and opposition ANO party leader Andrej Babiš went head-to-head on Sunday over the country's economic woes. The prime minister said that he expects the economic situation to improve next year, while Mr. Babiš declared that the government is destroying the country and will continue to do so next year as well.
However, the pair did manage to find agreement on the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, with the opposition leader saying he supports the Czech government's position of backing Israel, which Mr. Fiala's administration considers a key ally to the Czech Republic.
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12/17/2023
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's actions at Thursday's European Council meeting amount to blackmail and abuse of the right of veto, said Minister for European Affairs Martin Dvořák on CNN Prima News on Sunday. He called Mr. Orbán a Trojan horse that is trying to undermine EU solidarity.
At the EU summit, the Hungarian leader vetoed the revision of the EU budget for 2021-2027 to allow for long-term financial aid to Ukraine worth 50 billion euros, sparking criticism that he is trying to blackmail the EU in an effort to get funds for Hungary released that have been frozen over rule of law concerns.
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12/17/2023
Monday should be sunny and dry with temperatures ranging between 1 and 8 degrees Celsius.
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12/17/2023
Doctors will exhaust their maximum statutory number of overtime hours by the second half of next year again, Monika Hilšerová, spokesperson for the Young Doctors' Section of the Czech Medical Chamber said on Czech Television's political talk show Otázky Václava Moravce on Sunday, adding that some doctors had already worked the 416 hours allowed by law by August this year.
The Minister of Health, Vlastimil Válek, responded by saying that the problem should be solved by introducing shifts in hospitals where round-the-clock care is needed, instead of doctors working for 24 hours straight and then having a day off.
Doctors working in hospitals went on partial strike earlier this month, refusing to work overtime in protest at salary and working conditions. According to this year's survey by the Young Doctors' Association, on average medics work more than 900 hours of overtime per year.
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12/17/2023
Czechia is still lacking a long-term strategy to effectively prevent corruption and deal with its consequences, Transparency International stated on Sunday in a press release. According to the organisation, corruption has historically been a problem for all Czech governments, but in the case of Prime Minister Petr Fiala's coalition, the gulf between the promised change and reality is "glaring". They criticised the government for failing to pass any new high-quality anti-corruption laws in 2023, still not having satisfactorily resolved conflicts of interest concerning public procurement, and not conducting much-needed dialogue with non-governmental experts. Corruption in the Czech Republic affects sectors such as healthcare, energy, and the arms industry, they said.
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12/17/2023
Czechia has fallen to joint 15th place out of 27 in the EU in terms of quality of education and research, according to the latest Prosperity and Financial Health Index ranking. In almost all 10 indicators used to calculate Czechia's overall position, the country scored somewhere in the middle compared to other member states. It achieved its best result in research expenditure, where it came in 10th, while its worst was in the share of young people with tertiary education degrees, where it ranks 23rd.
The Index, a joint research project by Česká spořitelna, the Europe in Data portal and the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, measures the prosperity of the Czech Republic and the financial health of Czechs in the long term based on 10 "pillars", one of which is quality of education and research.
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12/16/2023
The percentage of secondary school students who failed their school-leaving exam decreased slightly year-on-year, the Czech School Inspectorate announced in its annual report. This year, 17.3 percent of students failed the exam, compared to 20.8 percent of students in 2022. According to the report, pupils had the most trouble with mathematics, with results in the subject getting worse for the third year in a row.
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12/16/2023
Sunday should be cloudy but dry, with temperatures ranging between 1 and 7 degrees Celsius.
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12/16/2023
Labour and Social Affairs Minister Marian Jurečka has submitted a proposal that would increase old-age pensions for former dissidents from next year if it is approved by the government on Wednesday. The bill foresees people who have a certificate of resistance against communism receiving the nationwide average pension, which would mean an increase for hundreds of people.
Many former dissidents who stood up to the communist regime are now living on very low pensions as a result of low incomes due to being imprisoned, forced into exile, or not being allowed to go to university and instead being made to work menial jobs for low pay. Since pensions are calculated based on lifetime earnings, for many dissidents this had a huge impact on the pensions they would later receive.
Former dissident and Charter 77 signatory Jiří Gruntorád went on hunger strike last month over the ongoing problem of low pensions for former dissidents and was later joined by fellow ex-dissident John Bok. They ended their protest after the government ordered the Labour Ministry to prepare a proposal to correct the problem by mid-December.
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