News

The number of sightings of the common jackal in the protected landscape of Pálava in south Moravia has recently increased, the Czech News Agency has reported.  According to local zoologists, it is not clear how many jackals have settled in the area.

The common jackal has also found its way into other places in Czechia, with a stable population recorded in the former military area in Milovice in central Bohemia.

The wolf-like canines are migrating to Czechia from their original habitat in Turkey and the Balkans as a result of the warming climate. The first piece of evidence proving the existence of jackals in the country was taken in 2015 by a camera trap just 40 kilometres out of Prague.

Czech Radek Houser won the bronze medal in the Snowboard Cross World Cup in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, on Saturday. In a close finish, he beat Canada’s Evan Bichon. The 27-year-old Czech reached the podium for the first time in his career. Another Czech, Eva Adamczyková, finished fifth in the women’s race.

Some 411,000 Czechs, mostly students and university staff, have participated in international exchanges with the European scholarship programme Erasmus+ over the past 25 years, the Czech News Agency reported on Saturday, citing data by the House of Foreign Cooperation. During the same period, some 118,500 university students came Czechia for study and nearly 30,000 for practical training.

Erasmus, which is the largest European programme in education, was launched in 1987 and Czechia joined it in 1998. It is currently open not only to university students, but also to secondary and primary school pupils, teachers, youth workers and sports coaches.

Several thousand people gathered on Prague’s Wenceslas Square on Saturday afternoon to protest against the government. The event is organised by the non-parliamentary PRO party and the allied association Czech Republic against Poverty.

The main demonstration organiser, lawyer and founder of the PRO party, Jindřich Reichl, stated the demonstrators are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, which he described as anti-social and anti-Czech. He also rejected the adoption of a common European currency, the European Union's climate policy and the planned ban on internal combustion engines.

Among the speakers was Senator Jana Zwyrtek Hamplová and deputy head of the Social Democratic Party, Michal Hašek, who greeted the demonstrators on behalf of the former head of state, Miloš Zeman. The protest follows on three demonstrations organised by the same group last year.