As of June 21st, the Czech Republic is open for American tourists. After a year, the European Union has advised its member nations to reopen their borders for Americans, and citizens from a few other countries. On June 21st the United States officially joins the list of ‘Green Countries’ that are allowed into the country. This follows Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhanek’s recent announcement on Twitter. Kulhanek stated that Americans will be allowed to visit the Czech Republic for any reason, including tourism. Besides the United States, five other countries were added to the green list on the same day. These include Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon, North Macedonia, and Taiwan. The European Union still needs to decide what vaccination certificates are acceptable for entry into their respective countries. America uses the same vaccines as the EU. Therefore, the clarification of acceptable certificates from Americans should be easy to determine. In pre-pandemic 2019, Americans were fifth place for tourism with overnight stays. In fact, Americans accounted for 1.4 million overnight stays that year out of the overall 27.2 million overnight stays.
In the coming months, hospital patients in the Czech Republic will start receiving more tasty and healthy diets according to the new recommendations of the Ministry of Health. The new system intends to strengthen the role of nutritional therapists. Upon admission, they could recommend to patients a standard diet of Czech, Mediterranean, Asian cuisine, or a diet for people at risk of malnutrition. The system was experimented for nine months by the General University Hospital in Prague (VFN). Until now, the meals prepared for patients have been based on the 1955 system where each hospital developed its own diets to meet the needs of each facility. Recommendations for a healthy diet have fundamentally changed in more than half a century. After 2017, the Ministry of Health established a group of researchers to create new methodological recommendations on catering and nutrition. Lucie Růžičková, the head nutritional therapist of the General Hospital, emphasizes quality as the basis for changes in the recommendations. Patients will be divided into those who have standard nutritional needs and those who suffer from anorexia, whose food should have a higher caloric value. “Today we served cod in parsley sauce with couscous and dried tomatoes for lunch,” says...
Czech police are denying that a method of restraint led to the death of a Roma man after video of an arrest sparked widespread outrage on social media. Roma say the incident draws parallels to the death of George Floyd. Video footage of a police officer kneeling on the neck of a Romany man who later died in an ambulance is being shared among Czechs on social media, leading many to compare his treatment to that of George Floyd. The video, shot on 19 June, shows three police officers in Teplice, detaining a Romany man on the floor. As one officer holds the man’s feet, another appears to kneel on his neck, and a third try to handcuff him. Voices of several Roma bystanders are heard in the video. In a statement released Monday, Czech police said the “aggressive” man was under the influence of methamphetamine and died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital after the police subdued him and noticed he was not showing signs of life. “No ‘Czech Floyd,” police posted on Twitter Monday, adding the man had been a “repeat offender.” They cite a preliminary post mortem examination that finds he suffered “pathological changes to...
Czech lawmakers approved an amendment that will enshrine the right to use a weapon in self-defense in the Czech constitution – a new right that will be included in the country’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The amendment was approved in reaction to the revised EU’s Firearms Directive applicable since 2018, setting stricter rules regarding the possession and acquisition of firearms and banning certain types of semi-automatic weapons. The EU directive was revised in response to the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. The Czech Republic opposed the proposal and challenged the directive before the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg, but without success. Currently, there are more than 300,000 gun-owners in the Czech Republic. Possession of firearms has also been considered an attribute of liberty after they were banned during Nazi occupation and then allowed only for those loyal to the Communist regime in the 20th century. According to Czech lawmakers, the new amendment will prevent further restrictions and strengthen the Czech position in talks on the future EU firearms regulation. The constitutional amendment stems from a petition written by Czech arms owners, sport shooters and hunters. The petition was signed by more than 100,000 people.
For the first time in history, the Czech Republic is richer than Italy and Spain. It follows from 2020 data from the International Monetary Fund, processed for the FX Street server by Lukáš Kovanda, chief economist of the government’s National Economic Council. Czechs are also happier than the French and the British. According to data presented by FX Street, the net income of the average Czech, including children and pensioners, increased by more than 600 percent since 1989 from less than CZK 2,000 (€78.20) to more than CZK 15,000 (€587) in 2018. The change is mainly due to the transition from a planned to a market economy after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. The first half of the 1990s was crucial, characterized by privatization, restitution, foreign owner input, and economic liberalization in general. The past 30 years represent the most successful period in Czech history from an economic point of view. The evidence of that is the rise of the country in the Fraser Institute World Economic Freedom Index from 101st to 20th place since 1990. However, FX Street also draws attention to the pay inequality that increased after 1989, when a new elite of the wealthiest...
Twelve thousand households in the Czech Republic remain without electricity on Tuesday as a result of floods and strong winds after technicians disconnected dozens of transformer stations. Gas supplies have also been turned off in areas from which people have been evacuated. Two thousand people found themselves without electricity in southern Bohemia. “We have seen six faults on the high voltage line. The outages concern the surroundings of Vyšší Brod, Olšina and Chyšek in the Český Krumlov region,” said Roman Šperňák from the energy company E.ON. Heavy torrential rain partially paralyzed traffic in Zlín. “At approximately 7:15 a.m., the underpass under the railway line in Zlín in Dlouhá Street was flooded and road traffic was interrupted,” said Vojtěch Cekota, spokesman for the Zlín – Otrokovice Transport Company. Meteorologists issued a weather warning until Wednesday. They say wind speeds could reach up to 70 meters per second in central and south-western parts of the country.
Plzeňský Prazdroj’s net profit fell by twenty percent to 3.8 billion crowns last year. Revenues decreased by more than CZK 1 billion year-on-year to almost CZK 16 billion. The main reason for the decline in economic results was the long-term closure of beer halls due to the coronavirus pandemic and the associated lower beer sales, the company said in a press release. The largest domestic brewery sold almost 11.2 million hectoliters of beer in the Czech Republic and abroad last year, down 4.2 percent year on year. Sales in the Czech Republic fell by eight percent year on year to 6.69 million hectoliters, while sales abroad rose by one percent to 4.52 million hectoliters. “Neither the greater interest in bottled and canned beer in the Czech Republic nor the maintenance of foreign sales at the level of 2019 could compensate for the losses caused by domestic restrictions on restaurants and pubs. In the pre-Eve period, draft beer accounted for 40 percent of our sales and fell by almost a third,“ CEO Dragos Constantinescu said today. Last year, the brewery remained in the group of the 20 largest domestic taxpayers in the Czech Republic, when it put five billion crowns into...
Video footage from Teplice is being massively shared through social media of police intervention against a young Romani man who later died in the ambulance called to the scene. Romani community members are comparing his death to the death of George Floyd, the Black man who was murdered by police in the USA last year. One of the intervening police officers kneeled for several minutes on the man’s neck. The young man later died in the ambulance called to the scene by police. Police say their intervention was not the cause of death, but that the drugs the Romani man is said to have used were the cause of death. Michal Miko, director of the Romanonet organization, has posted online that what the video shows is “The height of brutality.” Michal Mižigár, a Romani student of history and Romani Studies who won the Aspen Central Europe Leadership Award in 2019 from the Aspen Institute Central Europe, commented that the footage shows “The Romani Floyd today in Teplice!” The footage circulating on social media shows three officers intervening against a young man who keeps trying to get out from under them. One officer holds the man’s feet, another then kneels on...
From Monday, the Czech Republic will add the United States, Taiwan, Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Northern Macedonia among its list of safe countries in terms of coronavirus infection risk. Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhánek (CSSD) confirmed at today’s press conference that these countries will be designated “green” on the so-called travel risk map. However, tourists will still have to produce a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination at hotels and other establishments. The aforementioned countries will thus join other states, such as Israel, Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. From Monday, people who will be vaccinated 14 days after the second dose with a substance approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will be able to return to the Czech Republic from the dark red countries and no longer go into quarantine. Dark red countries with a very high risk of infection include Great Britain. People will be able to take the PCR test right after their return, so far it has been mandatory to take it between the fifth and 14th day after their return. Coronavirus in the Czech Republic The National Health Institute (SZU) has confirmed 27 cases of the Indian coronavirus variant, 59...
The number of cyberattacks launched against the Czech Republic’s health sector saw a 267% year-on-year increase in 2020, the annual report of the country’s National Cyber and Information Agency (NÚKIB) reads. The agency warns that last year saw the development of a new, large-scale trend of ransomware attacks against health facilities. The most serious incident occurred in March of last year when the Faculty Hospital in the city of Brno in the South Moravia region was targeted by a ransomware attack that caused millions in damages and shut down three departments for several weeks. Other targets included the Faculty Hospital in Ostrava, the Regional Hospital in Karlovy Vary, or the Hospital in Benešov. NÚKIB has warned of an upcoming wave of attacks targeting the country’s public and private sectors by a group of cybercriminals aiming to extort payments in Bitcoin. In the last year, several cyber attacks have hit state organisations in the Czech Republic, including Prague airport. The Czech Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Jana Maláčová, told the Czech media that the ministry had also been targeted, without giving further details.
The new ČTečka application will be launched this week. It can be used to check vaccination certificates or Covid-19 testing. “The app displays a green or red bar depending on whether the certificate is valid and complies with the current regulations,” said Lukasz Trnka, an official representative of the National Agency for Communications and Information Technology (NAKIT), about the new app. The čTečka application regularly updates (about once every 24 hours), its parameters – validation rules and signature certificates of EU countries. In the application, you can scan a unique QR code with your mobile phone camera, which is part of each certificate, and immediately check the electronic signature and the validity of the certificate. No internet connection is required. The app will be available on both Android and iPhone, in Czech and English. Main functionalities: load and store current signing keys of EU countries validation rules from the Ministry of Health server scan QR code, verify the electronic signature, check the validity of the certificate according to Czech Republic validation rules display summary and detailed information from the certificate The application doesn’t store or send out the personal data nor the health data of checked persons. One more app...
The leading Czech real estate service Bezrealitky has been investing in property for the past three months and returning them to the market after partial reconstructions. Since March 2021, the web portal has bought 35 buildings for over CZK 200 million as part of its new “Expres” business model. And it has proved effective – the first properties have since returned to the market and were promptly snatched up by new owners. The service “Expres” allows owners to sell a house, apartment, or recreational space at any level of disrepair and in record time. The entire transaction can be handled in three days. Currently, they’ve invested around ⅕ of the planned CZK 1 billion, having bought 7 houses, 26 apartments, and 2 recreational areas around the Czech Republic. So far, a few reconstructed units have been returned to the real estate market, with some already being bought. “Properties are bought via the Expres service for 95-99% of the market price, depending on the condition of the estate, with partial reconstruction increasing their value by an estimated 5-10%,” said Hendrik Meyer, the CEO of Bezrealitky. According to Meyer, the new model has proved successful and has clearly shown that this is...
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