News

A short animated film by Daria Kashcheeva, a student of Prague’s Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), has won the Short Cuts Award for Best Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada. Her film Electra, which doubles as her master’s thesis project, explores the ramifications of a father's absence with regard to his young daughter's psychological, emotional, and sexual development.

Kashcheeva previously won a student Oscar in 2019 for her short animated film Daughter, which was also nominated for Best Animated Short at the American Academy Awards and was shown in Short Cuts at the Toronto International Film Festival in the same year.

In addition to Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, Jana Kánská, the daughter of Milada Horáková, is also on board President Petr Pavel's flight to New York for the UN General Assembly, which starts on Monday. The president's advisor, Petr Kolář, told Czech daily Deník N that the decision to invite Jana Kánská on board was made at the last minute.

Ms. Kánská is a long-term resident of the USA but was visiting the Czech Republic and was due to return home on September 14. However, while spending the weekend at Mr Kolář's summer cottage, he asked her if she wanted to postpone her departure and fly with them to New York. She and the president were both keen to take up the offer as they had narrowly missed each other in Prague.

According to Mr Kolář, Mr Pavel had wanted to personally thank Ms Kánská for her support in his presidential campaign. The presidential advisor described the meeting as "very pleasant and moving" and said that the two talked at great length.

Once the plane lands in New York, Jana Kánská plans to head straight from there to Bethesda in the state of Maryland, where she lives.

The Czech National Bank expects inflation to decrease to around two percent early next year, the bank's governor Aleš Michl said on CNN Prima News on Sunday. He attributed the recent reduction in inflation to the strict fiscal policy the central bank has been following and said that he expects this trend of decreasing inflation to continue.

However, he ruled out an early interest rate cut in the coming months and said that people should rather expect higher interest rates over the next five years than they have been used to in the past decade. He added that he doesn't expect money ever to be as cheap as it was back in 2016 and 2017, when interest rates were sometimes even as low as zero and a large amount of money was printed. He described this as one of the biggest economic mistakes by a central bank in history and said that he wants to make sure that Czechia never again has the highest core inflation in the EU.

Before leaving for their flight to New York for the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský and President Petr Pavel told journalists that they want to lobby for Czechia's candidacy as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in nine years' time. President Pavel said that he has been pushing for Czechia's candidacy since he took office in March. Mr. Lipavský emphasised that these efforts are only just beginning.