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A Czech diver drowned in Upper Austria on Saturday, the Austrian Press Agency has reported. The Czech Foreign Ministry has confirmed that a Czech man drowned when diving in Vorderer Gosausee Lake on Saturday, but added that it had no further details about the accident. It is thought the man could have been using the wrong oxygen mix for the depth he was diving at, though investigators are yet to confirm this theory. The man was diving with two other Czechs, both of whom had no problems. Last year, two divers drowned in this particular Austrian lake.

The Canadian government has allegedly decided upon the reintroduction of visa restrictions for Czechs traveling to Canada and is due to make the announcement officially on Tuesday, reported Czech Television on Friday. Canada has been considering the reimposition of visa restrictions for Czechs for a while, following the high number of asylum claims being made predominantly by Czech Romany traveling to the country. In the first four months of this year, Ottawa received some 1,077 asylum claims from Czechs. Last year, some 861 Czechs sought asylum in the North American state. Visa restrictions were lifted after negotiations between Prague and Ottawa in 2007. Such visa restrictions had already been lifted once in 1997, but were reimposed after a matter of months when hundreds of Czechs flocked to Canada and sought asylum.

Water levels have receded further in South Bohemia following some of the worst flooding the region has experienced in recent history. On Friday, a spokesperson for the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute said that the situation was improving in the region, which has seen flooding cause millions of crowns worth of damage in the past week. On Friday, there were more storms in South Bohemia, but rivers continued to subside, Tomáš Vlasák said. Flash floods in North Moravia and South Bohemia killed 14 people last week, and left hundreds of households cut off without electricity and gas. Around 1,000 soldiers were deployed to help emergency services rescue people from the floods and get the clean-up operation underway.

The decision to put former Green MP Olga Zubová on the Social Democrats’ list of candidates for this autumn’s early elections sparked ire at a party conference on Saturday. The Social Democrats’ deputy leader Bohuslav Sobotka said that he had found out about Ms Zubová’s nomination on the internet on Friday night and that more discussion was needed about such a controversial appointment. South Moravian Governor Michal Hašek said that he hoped those who nominated Ms Zubová for the candidacy would take full responsibility for their decision. Ms Zubová was a member of the Social Democratic Party until 2005 when she decided to run for the Czech Greens. After a series of conflicts with former Green Party head Martin Bursík, Ms Zubová left the Greens to found her own Democratic Green Party, which failed to gain any seats in the recent elections to the European Parliament.