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Private rail company RegioJet has announced it will begin operating trains between Prague, Budapest, and Vienna as of June 2020, via the Czech city of Brno.

In doing so, the rail operator will directly compete with the Czech and Austrian national carriers.

RegioJet said train ticket prices would be comparable to those of “bus prices” and therefore cheaper than what Czech Railways charges now.

A three-year-old male Red Panda, an endangered species, has escaped from the Pilsen Zoo. Authorities have asked for the public not to try to catch the animal, which though not inherently aggressive, could strike out if cornered.

The Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens, or “shining-cat”) is a small arboreal mammal, only slightly larger than a domestic cat, native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China.

Pilsen Zoo spokesman Martin Vobruba said Red Pandas are agile explorers and may have leapt from a tree to escape the enclosure.

Several Red Pandas had escaped from Czech zoos over the past decade. One that escaped from Jihlava Zoo was dubbed “Kajinek” after a Czech hitman who escaped from a high-security prison in north Moravia.

Police in České Budějovice have arrested two foreign men and a Czech woman for allegedly supplying prostitutes to pensions in the Šumava region bordering Germany. If convicted on pimping charges, they face up to eight years in prison.

Police spokesman Jaroslav Ibehej said the three suspects had been bringing women from Ukraine, Romania and the Czech Republic to Šumava guest houses since at least 2011. The alleged ringleader also faces money laundering charges, he said.

The committee for EU affairs in the Czech lower house will discuss the nomination of Věra Jourová for another term as the Czech EU commissioner on Tuesday, August 20, the ctk news agency reported.

The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, already informed the incoming president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen about the government’s choice and the lower house is expected to give its final stamp of approval.

Jourová’s nomination has won broad support both from the government and opposition parties. Prime Minister Babiš is hoping that her experience will increase the country’s chances of getting a more ambitious portfolio, such as the internal market or digitalization.

Communist party leader Vojtěch Filip has come under fire for linking the growing price of pork on the market to the closure of the Lety pig farm in South Bohemia, which stood on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp for Romanies.

The Museum of Romany Culture, which had been pushing for the farm’s closure for years so as to enable the authorities to build a dignified memorial to the victims, said it was shocked by Filip’s words, noting that the closure of the offensive pig farm had been an important step in preserving the memory of the nation.

It moreover cited the Association of Czech Pig Breeders as saying that the growing price of pork stemmed from growing prices on world markets in connection with the incidence of swine fever in China and had nothing to do with the closure of the Lety farm.

The Social Democratic Party called Filip’s populist claim “repulsive”.

The Environment Ministry has attacked a decision by the Central Institute for Supervision and Testing in Agriculture to allow farmers to use a certain type of rat poison in fields, orchards, meadows and vineyards.

The ministry says the Stutox II poison against rodents is highly toxic and presents a serious threat to birds and animals in the vicinity. The Environment Ministry says the application of the given substance violates the law on landscape protection.

The Central Institute for Supervision and Testing in Agriculture falls under the Ministry of Agriculture which has not yet commented on the development.However the institute has confirmed that the said rat poison has not up to the present time been used on Czech territory.

Around forty leading personalities linked to the 1989 freedom demonstrations have signed an open letter protesting against what they see as a manipulative campaign in the press aiming to rewrite 1989 events in a way that will suit some present-day politicians.

The signatories, who include Dagmar Havlova, former dissidents and student leaders, objected to two interviews pertaining to the events of November 1989 published in the daily MfDnes, which took a different slant on the events and attempted to play down the significance of the student protests. The said interviews were with gallery owner and former communist apparatchik Jiří Jaskmanický and documentary filmmaker Pavel Chalupa.

The paper’s editor-in-chief, Jaroslav Plesl, countered that in the interest of objective reporting the prepared interviews on the 1989 events included people from all walks of life and politicial allegiances.

Friday should be clear to partly cloudy with more clouds gathering in the afternoon hours and day time highs between 26 and 30 degrees Celsius.

The second quarter has seen an increase in the number of foreign visitors to the Czech capital, according to data released by the Czech Statistics Office on Thursday.

The number of tourists in Prague in the second quarter reached 5.8 million, which in an increase by 4.9 percent on the previous year.

German tourists are the most frequent visitors from abroad, followed by tourists from the US, Great Britain, Russia, China and Italy. The number of Czechs who visited the capital city was slightly over 300, 000.

The world’s largest airline, American Airlines will launch direct flights between Prague and Chicago as of next year. The five-days-a week service will be operated by Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft and will be launched on May 8, 2020. Tickets will go on sale on August 12.

Chicago is one of the top five destinations in North America and the service will offer passengers a large number of connecting flights. It is expected to serve around 48,000 passengers a year. Passengers can also fly direct to New York, Philadelphia and Newark.