Morning News: Monday, February 27, 2023

The Czech Ministry of Health has spent over 18 billion crowns on dealing with the Covid pandemic in the past three years. According to a ministry report 14.6 billion was spent on vaccines, 2.3 billion on protective equipment and lung ventilators, 940 million was spent on operating the Smart Quarantine system.

The Czech minister of foreign affairs, Jan Lipavský, says Russia must withdraw unconditionally from the whole of Ukraine. In an address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Mr. Lipavský said Russia’s aggression, which has now been going on for a year, had caused unimaginable suffering both in Ukraine and elsewhere.

General Emil Boček, the last surviving Czech airman who served in Britain’s RAF during WWII, turned 100 on Saturday, February 25. The veteran pilot served with the RAF’s 312 and 310 squadrons and participated in over two dozen operational flights.

Universities in the Czech Republic secured studies of some 3,500 Ukrainian refugees last year, and the Education Ministry gave 173 million crowns to universities for the education of refugees from Ukraine.

The town of Číhošt’ in the Havlíčkův Brod region is marking 73 years since the murder of priest Josef Toufar, who died after being brutally tortured by the communist secret police in 1950.