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Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) told President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan during a business trip this week that human rights are of greater importance to Czechs than getting a panda, he wrote on Twitter.

Communist China often gifts pandas to countries that embrace its “one China” policy, which does not recognise Taiwan.

Mayor Hřib, who was attending the Smart City Summit & Expo conference as part of his business trip to Taiwan, was alluding to a diplomatic incident last week.

Minister of Industry and Trade Marta Nováková (on the ANO ticket) bowed to the Chinese ambassador in asking Taiwan’s representative to leave a meeting at her ministry.

Mr Hřib said he and Taiwan’s president had discussed the possibility of direct flights between Prague and Taipei, which he said could facilitate ties. Currently, Taiwan has an Economic and Cultural Office in the Czech Republic but no embassy.

Mortgage lending fell by 26.9 percent in the first two months of 2019 to 24.5 billion crowns, according to Czech National Bank figures.

Market analysts attribute the drop to front-loading in the second half of 2018 in anticipation of stricter lending guidelines and higher interest rates.

The average mortgage rate in the Czech Republic has been steadily climbing since reaching a record low of 1.8 percent in December 2016. It stood at 3.0 percent in January.

Meanwhile, consumer bank and credit-union borrowing rose by 7.1 percent in February, to 1.66 trillion crowns.

An accident involving a trolley bus and a tram in central Brno on Monday afternoon left at least 38 people injured, 12 of them seriously.

Apart from the tram driver, those suffering injuries in the collision on Křenová Street are all thought to have been bus passengers. Two children are among the injured.

Minister of Transport Dan Ťok said reports of an imminent cabinet shuffle that would see him ousted from the position are unfounded. He quipped that the report was “an April Fool’s Day joke”.

Citing sources close to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, the news site idnes.cz reported that both Ťok and Industry and Trade Minister Marta Nováková are on their way out, with the reshuffle likely to happen by mid-May at the latest.

Ťok is being blamed for the state of the country’s permanently congested D1 highway. Nováková is under fire over an incident when a representative of Taiwan was forced to leave a diplomatic meeting at the request of China’s ambassador.

Prague City Hall councillors have agreed to commission artistic designs for each station of the planned metro D line, running from Pankrác to Písnice.

The designs will be chose in conjunction with the National Gallery Prague and architect David Vávra.

As regards the Pankrác station, the first to be built, sculptors Marian Karel and Vladimír Soukénka have already been approached.

Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Tomáš Petříček (Social Democrats) is in Lithuania on Monday for a meeting with his counterparts in the Visegrad, Nordic and Baltic regions.

Topping the agenda of the so-called V4 + NB8 meeting is measures to ensure cybersecurity and counter hybrid threats, within the wider scope of relations with Russia and China.

Also under discussion are presidential elections in Ukraine and migration issues affecting Europe as a whole.

The Moravian-Silesian Police have taken 21 people into custody following a coordinated drug bust in the region that uncovered 25 marijuana growing rooms, mostly in Ostrava.

A police spokesman said a married couple led the growing and distribution network, which apart from marijuana, also sold cocaine, ecstasy and other illegal drugs.

The number of children enrolling in the first year of elementary school is down by some 8,100 from last year, according to estimates from the Ministry of Education.

According to the ministry's estimates, approximately 110,500 six-year-olds, 1,000 five-year-olds and about 25,500 seven-year-olds and older children are expected to start elementary school in September.

The Czech state has proven unable to respond properly to dynamic changes in society the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) says in its annual report published on Monday.

Among examples, the report cites the slow rate of digitalisation and expanding transport infrastructure, an overly complex tax system, a failure to introduce energy-saving measures, and a chronic lack of low-income housing.

Regarding taxation, companies based in the Czech Republic need 40 percent more time to meet their tax obligations than the average of 230 hours in the EU and the European Free Trade Association, it says.

Tuesday should be partly cloudy in Bohemia and bright and sunny in Moravia. Average daytime highs of 14 to 18 degrees Celsius are expected.