News

The State Health Institute has warned of a sharp rise in tick-borne diseases, Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis. According to data from the institute, 506 cases of Lyme disease were reported in the first four months of this year, while the number of people infected with encephalitis almost doubled compared to the same period last year. Hydro-meteorologists report exceptionally good conditions for tick activity throughout the country and a large number of the ticks are reported to be infected.

Two giant butterflies made from Spitfire aircraft fuselages have being installed on the Máj department store in the centre of Prague, which will soon reopen to the public after a 2-year-reconstruction. The giant art sculptures are the work of artist David Černý, who has many unusual art pieces around Prague.

His latest work has come under fire from the Club for Old Prague which claims that the purple-and-turquoise butterflies are kitsch.

Černý has vehemently defended the art work, saying that the butterflies made from Spitfire fuselages were created in honour of the fighter pilots who served in the RAF. He said the sculptures were originally planned for the NATO headquarters in Brussels. A similar fighter jet will be placed there sometime in the near future, he said.

The opposition ANO party retains a strong edge over its rivals in opinion polls. According to a survey conducted by the Kantar agency for Czech Television, if elections were held today, ANO would get 32 percent of the votes, followed by the ruling Civic Democrats with 15.5 percent and the Pirate Party of the governing coalition with 11 percent. The opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy party would get 9 percent of the votes, followed by the coalition parties Mayors and Independents with 7.5 percent and TOP 09 with 5 percent of the votes. No other party would cross the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the lower chamber.

Relations between Czechs and Sudeten Germans have improved significantly in recent years, and the days when Czechia viewed conferences of the Landsmannschaft with apprehension are now a thing of the past, the Czech ambassador to Germany, Tomáš Kafka, said in an address to the annual gathering of Sudeten Germans in Augspurk, Bavaria. The Sudeten German Landsmannschaft which organizes annual gatherings is one of the biggest organisations representing ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. Ambassador Kafka attended the meeting as the official representative of the Czech government. He conveyed to the gathering greetings from President Petr Pavel, saying that the Czech head of state is very pleased with the direction and dynamism with which Czech-German relations are developing.

In the past, Czech-German relations were burdened by the past, driven also by Czech fears of potential property demands from descendants of Germans expelled after the war. The moto of this year’s gathering, which was held three weeks before the European Parliament elections, is Sudeten Germans and Czechs - Together for Europe.