Morning Briefing │ Friday, March 22nd, 2024

* POLITICS:

Czechia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are calling on the European Commission to impose restrictions on grain imports from Russia and Belarus to the European Union, in a letter signed by the agriculture ministers of all five countries.

* WEATHER:

Friday will be mostly overcast with occasional rain showers. Day temperatures are expected to range between 12 and 16 degrees Celsius.

* TRAVEL:

Prague’s Václav Havel Airport will offer direct flights to 167 destinations during the upcoming summer schedule, which comes into effect on March 31. The new destinations include direct flights to Verona and Florence in Italy, Ponta Delgada in Portugal, Tallin, Estonia and the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana. The flights will be operated by 68 carriers.

* RANKINGS:

According to the annual World Happiness Report – issued every year on 20 March, the International Day of Happiness – the Czech Republic is the 18th happiest country in the world, for the third year in a row.The research takes six variables into consideration to draw up the World Happiness Report and index: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.

* UKRAINE:

The Czech government has transferred the last two Mi-24 attack helicopters for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to Ukraine.
These are currently the last two helicopters (tail numbers 3365 and 3366) that the Prague government can transfer to Ukraine from its depot. In total, the Czech Republic transferred eight Mi-24s.