News

Police have filed charges against seven foreign nationals and one Czech citizen for smuggling more than 30 kilograms of cocaine from Germany to the Czech Republic. The drugs were hidden inside cakes transported by couriers on a scheduled bus from Berlin to Prague’s Florenc bus station, according to a press release from the National Drug Headquarters (NPC).

The suspects paid more than CZK 600,000 for each one-kilogram brick of cocaine and then sold it in Prague for several hundred thousand crowns more, the report said.

The Czech Philharmonic, led by guest conductor Jakub Hrůša, will honor former chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek at a concert in Prague’s Rudolfinum on Wednesday evening.

Bělohlávek, who died in 2017, would have turned 80 this February.

The program will feature two works by Josef Suk: the concert overture “A Winter’s Evening Tale” and the suite from the play “Radúz and Mahulena.” Hrůša has long focused on Suk’s music and regularly performs it in the Czech Republic and abroad.

Czech midfielder Tomáš Souček scored his 39th Premier League goal to help West Ham secure a 1–1 draw against Manchester United on Tuesday and become the highest-scoring Czech player in the competition’s history.

Souček moved ahead of Patrik Berger, with whom he had previously shared the record. Berger scored 38 goals in 225 appearances for Liverpool, Portsmouth and Aston Villa between 1996 and 2008.

The Chamber of Deputies has started debating the government’s proposed state budget for 2026 with a planned deficit of 310 billion crowns.

In the first reading, the Chamber of Deputies will vote on the main budget parameters, including revenues, expenditures and the deficit. A lengthy debate is expected, after which the lower house is likely to approve the core figures with support from the governing coalition.

In the second reading lawmakers will be able to propose reallocations within the overall budget.

The opposition has criticized both the size of the deficit and what it describes as a breach of the law on budgetary responsibility. Finance Minister Alena Schillerová (ANO) rejects claims of a legal violation, arguing that the law applies only to budgets discussed within the standard timeframe. She has described the draft as realistic and the proposed deficit as optimal, given mandatory expenditures.