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Sunday is expected to be mostly overcast with daytime temperatures ranging between 0 and 4 degrees Celsius.

The country’s National Security Council is due to meet on Monday to address the spread of the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš told the Czech News Agency on Sunday.

The deadly virus has killed at least 56 people in China and infected at least 2,000 globally since its discovery in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.

Mr Babiš said random checks are already being carried out at Prague airport, focusing on people who are showing symptoms of the disease. According to Health Minister Adam Vojtěch, there are no immediate plans to introduce blanket screenings of patients arriving from the affected areas.

Prague Zoo has raised nearly 13.5 million crowns (approximately 840,000 AUD) through a public donation fund to help in the relief efforts to Australia, which was ravaged by devastating bushfires, the zoo’s director Miroslav Bobek announced on Sunday.

According to Mr. Bobek, the funds will be used for immediate relief but also for mid-term or long-term projects aimed at protection of certain locations or animal species. The collection was established on January 6 and will continue for the next two months.

At least 30 people have been killed in the unprecedented bushfires, which have swept large parts of Australia since October, and around 10 million hectares of land has burned. It is also estimated that around a billion animals have been lost to the fire.

Twelve people, including a Czech citizen, have been put in isolation in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang and are under observation for the new coronavirus, the Vietnamese news site Tuoi tre news wrote on Sunday.

According to the website, the people are being monitored in the city’s hospital as they all have fevers and have been recently in contact with high-risk subjects.

A spokeswoman for the Czech Foreign Ministry said the man was hospitalised for preventive reasons, adding that he is in contact with the Czech Embassy in Hanoi.

A pneumonia outbreak, caused by a new strain of the coronavirus family was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan City in December 2019. The virus has spread to other countries, infecting more than 2,000 people globally.

Some 60 IT specialists from around the country are taking part in a hackathon to produce an online sales system for electronic vignettes, following the scrapping of an overpriced deal negotiated by the former transport minister.

The aim of the event, which got underway on Friday evening, is to produce a functional online sales system which they will offer the government free of charge. According to its organizer, IT specialist and entrepreneur Tomáš Vondráček, they should produce and online system by 6 PM on Sunday.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who visited the event on Sunday, said that if the system proves the be fully functional, the government is ready to put it to use.

The main prize in this year’s Trilobit film and television awards has gone to actors Jiří Schmitzer and Vladimír Mrkvička for their roles in the film Old-Timers (Staříci), about a geriatric pair seeking revenge on a communist-era prosecutor, directed by Martin Dušek and Ondřej Provazník.

The lifetime achievement award went to the legendary Czech actor Vladimír Pucholt, who currently lives in Canada and who is known for his roles in Miloš Forman’s films Loves of a Blond and Black Peter.

In tennis, Czech seventh seed Petra Kvitová has reached the Australian Open quarter-finals after she battled from a set down to defeat Maria Sakkari of Greece 6-7 6-3 6-2.

The two-time Wimbledon champion will now face either world number one Ashleigh Barty or American Alison Riske in Melbourne.

The winner of the 24th annual dog sled race called Šediváčkův Long, held in the Orlické Mountains in north-eastern Czech Republic, is Czech Roman Habásko, who won the race with his twelve dogs in 16 hours and 39 minutes.

Some 80 mushers from ten countries with nearly 700 dogs competed in the race, which got underway on Tuesday. Due to poor weather conditions, the routes were shortened to 250 and 170 kilometres.

Šediváčkův Long is considered one of the toughest in Europe. Competitors also have to spend one or two nights sleeping in the snow. 

The foreign ministers of the Visegrad Four, comprising the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, are due to meet with their Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in Prague next week. Among the topics on their agenda will be the security situation in the Middle East and north Africa and its impact on the European Union.

Mr Shoukry, who will be in the Czech Republic from Wednesday to Friday, will also hold bilateral talks with his Czech counterpart, Tomáš Petříček. Egypt is one of the Czech Republic’s most significant trading partners in the Middle East. In 2018 the volume of mutual trade reached over 345 million US dollars.

Five Czech police officers, who have temporarily returned to the Czech Republic from a military mission in Baghdad, are due to return to Iraq on Saturday. The officers returned to Czechia 16 days ago due to a restricted operation of the training centre in the Iraqi capitol.

The Minister of Interior, Jan Hamáček, said their the move had nothing to do with the development of the safety situation in the country. The Czech Army currently has around 40 soldiers and police officers in Iraq mainly working to train Iraqi security forces to fight against the ISIS militia.

They remained stationed in the country despite the conflict between the Us and Iran following the US drone strike on a leading Iranian general.