Morning Briefing │ Thursday, February 8th, 2024

* RETAIL:

The Czech Republic’s retail sales increased for the second successive month in December, driven by more demand for non-food sales, data from the Czech Statistical Office showed on Wednesday.

Retail sales, except motor vehicles and motorcycles, rose a calendar-adjusted 1.6 percent year-on-year in December, after a 0.1 percent recovery in the previous month.

* LAWS:

The lower house of the Czech parliament has supported changing the definition of rape in Czech law to sex without consent rather than sex by force or physical coercion.

Another change proposed by the draft law is that all sexual activity with children under 12 years of age always be treated as rape or assault, rather than the less serious criminal offence of sexual abuse.

* POLITICS:

Former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš has been unsuccessful in his appeal against the verdicts of the Bratislava regional court and the Supreme Court in his native Slovakia regarding whether he worked as an agent for the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) under communism.

* HEALTH:

Two retail associations have decided to stop selling edible products containing the psychoactive substance HHc. The products will be withdrawn from sale by the end of the week, the head of the Association of Safe Vending Machines, Vojtěch Ulman, told the agency.

Over the past year, about a hundred people have ended up in hospital after ingesting products containing HHC.

* NEW SERVICE:

The Ukrainian Railways has signed a contract with RegioJet, the Czech railway operator, which will launch trains from Chop (Zakarpattia province, western Ukraine) of western Ukraine to Prague in March. Tickets will cost about 25 euros.

The travel time is 13 hours and 30 minutes, including passport control at the Slovak border.