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Businessman Dalibor Dědek, poet Miloš Doležal, and Catholic priest and philosopher Tomáš Halík were among the 17 people who received commemorative silver medals from the President of the Senate, Miloš Vystrčil, at an awards ceremony in the Valdštejn Palace on Thursday evening. The medals are awarded every year on the Day of Czech Statehood and St. Wenceslas Day, September 28, to people who have excelled in their field or contributed to the good reputation of the Czech Republic abroad.

The award was presented for the first time in 2012. This year's ceremony is the twelfth.

Firefighters succeeded in putting out a fire in the Bohemian Switzerland national park on Thursday affecting an area of forest about 50 by 50 metres in size. Dozens of firefighters and a helicopter were called to the scene.

The fire broke out on Wednesday afternoon in very difficult-to-access terrain near Jetřichovice, about five kilometres as the crow flies from the area where the largest forest fire in Czech history, covering over 1000 hectares, raged last summer.

The March 2021 helicopter crash that killed Czech billionaire Petr Kellner and four others in Alaska was likely caused by pilot error and inadequate training, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was "the pilot's failure to adequately respond to an encounter with whiteout conditions, which resulted in the helicopter's collision with terrain." The operator's inadequate pilot training program and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) principal operations inspector's "insufficient oversight of the operator" also contributed to the accident, the NTSB report said.

Kellner, who was Czechia's richest man at the time of the crash, was the founder of the investment group PPF and had amassed wealth estimated at $17.5 billion at the time of his death, according to Forbes. He was the world's 68th richest person on Forbes' 2020 list, tied with media giant Rupert Murdoch and his family.

Kellner's family filed a lawsuit in April for a probe into potential negligence that caused the deadly crash.

The traditional open-air mass commemorating the death of Czechia's patron saint, Saint Wenceslas, took place in the town of Stará Boleslav, northeast of Prague, on Thursday morning. Many believers made a pilgrimage to the town, some on foot, to attend the mass. Stará Boleslav is the place where Saint Wenceslas was murdered on September 28, 935 by a group of his opponents, among whom was his brother Boleslav.

Cardinal Dominik Duka led the mass, with the sermon being delivered by Bishop Jan Baxant of Litoměřice. President Petr Pavel, Senate President Miloš Vystrčil, and Prague Archbishop Jan Graubner were also in attendance, as well as other church leaders, politicians, army officials, and ambassadors.

Stará Boleslav is the oldest Czech pilgrimage site associated with the cult of Saint Wenceslas, which was spread throughout Europe by Charles IV. September 28 has been an official state public holiday in Czechia since 2000 and is marked in the calendar as the Day of Czech Statehood. The National St. Wenceslas Pilgrimage was restored by the Roman Catholic Church in 2003.