News | All stories

Temperatures during the weekend are expected to hover around 6 to 7 degrees Celsius. Rainfall will be common across the east and south of the country on Saturday.

Three contestants will be vying for the position of chairman of the Pirate Party at the party's January statewide conference. According to Czech Television, current Pirates leader Ivan Bartoš will be challenged by Chamber of Deputies members Vojtěch Pikal and Mikuláš Ferjenčík. Members were able to nominate candidates on the party's forum website by the end of Friday.

Ivan Bartoš has led the Pirate Party since 2016, but was chairman during two stints between 2009 and 2014.

Czech police arrested a man who is suspected of carrying out an axe attack in the western Bohemian town of Aš, which left two people seriously injured. The attack took place on Friday morning and one of the victims was a postman, Czech Radio's iRozhlas news site reports. The suspect, who has a criminal record, was arrested after a coordinated police search during the night from Friday to Saturday.

Lukáš Krpálek has won the annual Czech Sportsman of the Year competition. The Judo world champion beat second placed basketball player Tomáš Satoránský by 74 points. The Boston Bruins's ice hockey right winger David Pastrňák placed third. The winners in the collective category were the Czech national basketball team, who placed sixth in this year's FIBA Basketball World Cup.

Aside from ice hockey star Jaromír Jágr, Mr Krpálek is one of only two men to win the award in the past 14 years.

Fans of the legendary Czech pop star Karel Gott can now visit his grave in Prague's Malvazinky Cemetery, the singer's widow Ivana Gottová informed via the website karelgott.com, which also features a map on how to reach the location. Mrs Gottová worked on the grave's design with architect Jiří Deýl and engineer Pavel Štrunc.

The signer died of acute leukemia on October 1, a the age of 80. Some 49,000 people paid there respects to the singer at his coffin displayed in Prague's Žofín Palace.

Czechia's regions and its capital Prague will be able to draw on CZK 52 million of funding from the Ministry of Interior to use on protection of their "soft targets", a 30 percent increase compared to the previous year, Czech Television reported on Friday. Largest investments in this area are expected from Prague, as well as the Vysočina and Olomouc regions.

The subsidy program of the Ministry of the Interior is intended to increase the protection of schools and public spaces from armed attacks. The grant can be used for the reimbursement of expert studies, the creation of security plans, but also educational and training events.

A soft target is an individual or object that is not heavily protected, but can be especially vulnerable to a military or terrorist attack.

Saturday should be partly cloudy to overcast with rain predominantly in the eastern parts of the country and day temperatures between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius. Meteorologists expect mild weather up until Christmas.

Czech Post will increase the price for some of its services as of January 1st and introduce dual-speed deliveries. The state-owned company, which is undergoing reorganization, has been criticized for late deliveries. As of next year it will offer clients the choice of paying more for guaranteed faster deliveries of mail and parcels, which should be delivered by the following day, or stick with the basic price in which case the delivery will take longer.

The Czech Republic will not be able to immediately apply a generalized reversal of VAT liability for which Brussels has given EU member states approval for a limited period. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who fought for the reverse charge mechanism to be made possible for close to five years on the argument that it could save the country billions of crowns in unpaid VAT, said on Thursday the country needed more time to get the respective legislation in place. He said the testing period until 2022 was too short and the country would ask for an extension.

The EU member states have been given the green light to apply the generalized reverse charge mechanism only for domestic supplies of goods and services above a threshold of 17, 500 euros (around 450,000 crowns) per transaction and only up until June 30, 2022, when the outcome of the exemption will be reviewed.

Doctors and civil servants are reported to be getting threats from patients in the wake of the shooting incident in Ostrava’s university hospital. Police are investigating two separate cases in which people threatened a repeat of the hospital scenario because they were unhappy with the treatment received.

A sixty-five year old man voiced the threat after his eye doctor refused to approve a health certificate for his driving licence and a fifty-year-old man in Ostrava threatened a clerk at the city council in the same manner, after being asked to bring additional papers in order to get his request processed. Both men have been charged and could face up to a year in prison.