• 05/24/2023

    Thursday is expected to be warm and sunny with daytime temperatures of up to 20 degrees Celsius.

    Author: Anna Fodor
  • 05/24/2023

    President Petr Pavel received Prince Edward, brother of the British monarch King Charles III, in the Throne Hall of Prague Castle on Wednesday. The two men met for the first time on Tuesday after the prince's arrival, when Mr Pavel invited him to the cultural and social centre Malostranská Beseda in Prague.

    From Prague Castle, Prince Edward headed to Vestec, a village near the capital where a tree-lined avenue was created last year to mark the 100th birthday of Prince Philip, Edward's father and husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Edward will plant the last tree in the avenue in memory of his father, who was the founder of the The Duke of Edinburgh International Award, where young participants sets goals they want to achieve in volunteering, exercise or skill-based activities, and then fulfill them over a period of months.

    The programme has been operating in the Czech Republic since 1995, with more than 320 schools now taking part. Gold medals will be presented to successful graduates of the programme by Edward in a ceremony on Wednesday afternoon.

    Author: Anna Fodor
  • 05/24/2023

    The Senate Defence and Security Committee unanimously endorsed approving an annual state defence budget of at least two percent of GDP on Wednesday.

    The government proposal of spending at least two percent of GDP annually on defence is based on NATO recommendations. The Czech News Agency reports that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg plans to say at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July that the recommendation is a minimum spend, not a maximum.

    The Senate is due to vote on the issue next week, but according to the Czech News Agency, the unanimous endorsement by the security and defence committee means it is likely that it will be approved. If it is, the law would take effect from July and would apply starting from next year's state budget.

    Author: Anna Fodor
  • 05/24/2023

    Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský opened the Czech-Saudi business forum in Riyadh on Wednesday, emphasising the importance of future economic cooperation between the two countries. He described the current economic transformation of Saudi Arabia as a huge opportunity for the development of mutual relations and meaningful business partnerships.

    The forum is being attended by a 15-member Czech business delegation made up of companies in industries ranging from defence, petrochemicals, and construction to IT, the music and the spa industries.

    Author: Anna Fodor
  • 05/24/2023

    The Czech national ice hockey team were beaten 3:1 by Canada at the World Championships in the Latvian capital Riga on Tuesday evening. The result means the Czechs finished fourth in group B.

    They will now face the United States – who are so far undefeated at the tournament – in the quarter-finals in the Finnish city of Tampere on Thursday.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/24/2023

    Sparta Prague have been crowned Czech football league champions for the 37th time in the club’s history. Sparta sealed the title after a 0:0 draw away to Slovácko on Tuesday evening gave them an unassailable lead in the penultimate round of the “superstructure”, in which the division is split into three mini-leagues at the end of the season.

    Around 1,500 Sparta fans had travelled to Slovácko’s ground in the Moravian town of Uherské Hradiště to see them win the league for the first time in nine years.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/23/2023

    A defence cooperation agreement between Czechia and the US was signed in Washington on Tuesday by the Czech minister of defence, Jana Černochová, and her American counterpart, Lloyd Austin.

    Earlier in the day Ms. Černochová had told reporters that the treaty was not on basing US soldiers on Czech soil or on the creation of an American military base in the country.

    Ms. Černochová told Czech Television that the Czech side had got as much as possible out of the deal.

    The defence cooperation agreement creates an overarching framework to codify already existing cooperation between the two countries' militaries.

    The US has such agreements with more than 20 other NATO members.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/23/2023

    The UK’s Prince Edward arrived in Czechia on Tuesday afternoon at the start of a visit that is due to last until Thursday. One of the main points of his stay will be meeting Czech students taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award at Prague’s British Embassy.

    The youngest brother of King Charles will also visit the village of Vestec near Prague, pay his respects at a memorial to the heroes of Operation Anthropoid and meet the Czech president, Petr Pavel.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/23/2023

    From next year Czechia’s main public health insurer, VZP, will cover the costs of preventive examinations for the early detection of skin cancer. Until now, the insured had the option of paying for the examination themselves and then applying for financial compensation in return.

    Jan Bodnár, deputy director of VZP, said on Tuesday that the success of skin tumor treatment depended on the stage at which doctors discovered it.

    Author: Ian Willoughby
  • 05/23/2023

    A defence cooperation agreement between Czechia and the US that is due to be signed in Washington on Tuesday is not a treaty on basing US soldiers on Czech soil or on the creation of an American military base in the country, the Czech minister of defence, Jana Černochová, told reporters. She was speaking just hours before she and her American counterpart, Lloyd Austin, were due to put their signatures to the document in the US capital.

    Ms. Černochová told Czech Television that the Czech side had got as much as possible out of the agreement.

    The Czech defence chief and the speaker of the Czech lower house, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, also laid a wreath at a monument in Washington to the founder of Czechoslovakia, T.G. Masaryk.

    Author: Ian Willoughby

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