Category Archives: Czech Republic

Czech Republic goes from model Covid-19 response to brink of second lockdown

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Country lauded as success in managing pandemic on verge of new blanket closures

The Czech Republic could be set for a second lockdown following a dramatic rise in Covid-19 infections that has transformed it into Europe’s fastest growing outbreak just months after being hailed as one of the continent’s success stories in managing the pandemic.

A new peak of 8,618 cases was recorded on Friday in the country of 10.7 million, up more than 3,000 on the previous day and significantly more per capita than any other European state. Spain, with a population of just under 47 million and currently the second worst-affected country, documented 12,788 infections on the same day.

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As Covid cases rise again, how are countries in Europe reacting?

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Tighter measures are being imposed, but they vary across the continent

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Global preparation: how different countries planned for the second wave of Covid-19

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Lockdowns brought temporary relief to some but, everywhere, test and trace is key

The first wave of coronavirus swept through a world unprepared. Authorities struggled to test for the disease, and didn’t know how to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Lockdowns brought the virus under temporary control in some places, including the UK, buying a window for the revival of education and the economy, and time to prepare for future waves that epidemiologists said were almost inevitable.

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Ursula von der Leyen says Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones’ have no place in EU

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In her first ‘state of union’ speech, European commission president delivers criticism of Polish ruling party

The head of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said Poland’s “LGBT free zones” are “humanity-free zones” that have no place in the European Union in her strongest criticism yet of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party.

In a wide-ranging 77-minute speech spanning from coronavirus to the climate emergency, Von der Leyen pledged to build “a union of equality” and criticised European member states that watered down EU foreign policy messages on human rights.

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Global wrap: Hong Kong ‘critical’ as Covid cases rise worldwide

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Lam says situation out of control, while Melbourne makes face masks compulsory

The coronavirus situation in Hong Kong is “really critical”, with a record 100 new infections recorded on Sunday, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, said, as Melbourne became the first city in Australia to make wearing masks compulsory in response to a resurgent and aggressive outbreak there.

Hong Kong was held up months ago as a model for its success in keeping down Covid-19 cases in the crowded city-state of 7.5 million people, but its caseload – although still low by European and American standards – had grown by a third in the past fortnight to nearly 1,800. Lam has shuttered bars, gyms and nightclubs in the past week and on Sunday announced new guidelines including mandatory mask-wearing indoors.

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Prague erects replica of baroque Virgin Mary statue toppled in 1918

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Sculptor Petr Váňa installs his copy of 1652 original in Czech capital’s Old Town Square

A replica of a historic statue of the Virgin Mary has been restored to the spot in Prague where a revolutionary mob tore down the original more than a century ago.

It had been erected in 1652 to celebrate the victory of pro-Catholic Habsburg forces over Sweden in the 30 years’ war, but a group of radicals toppled it in November 1918 as the Habsburg empire crumbled at the end of the first world war. The revolutionaries saw it as a symbol of Habsburg oppression.

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‘Demand is huge’: EU citizens flock to open-air cinemas as lockdown eases

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From Berlin to Madrid the movies are back, albeit with hygiene and distancing restrictions

As Madrid’s spring evenings warm into summer nights, cinema-goers are parking up to watch Grease. In Munich, they are taking al fresco seats to follow the adventures of a communist kangaroo with a penchant for boozy chocolates, and in Prague they are witnessing a croaky vigilante work out some profound childhood traumas.

As Europe begins to stir from its Covid-19 lockdown, people bloated by two-month boxset binges have a new way to feed their entertainment needs as they emerge, blinking, into the daylight. Or, rather, the twilight.

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European leaders mark war generation heroics in shadow of pandemic

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Quiet commemorations held to mark 75 years since end of war on continent

Seventy-five years ago crowds massed in the streets of Europe, singing and dancing as their leaders announced the end of six years of bloody war. Today, the streets were empty, and leaders stood alone in silence at places of commemoration, as a continent marked the heroics of the war generation in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Prague revamp reveals Jewish gravestones used to pave streets

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Find confirms speculation communist regime raided synagogues for building materials

Dozens of paving stones made from Jewish headstones have been found during redevelopment work in Prague’s tourist district, confirming speculation that the former communist regime raided synagogues and graveyards for building materials.

Tuesday’s discovery came in the opening phase of a £10.6m facelift project in the city’s landmark Wenceslas Square, scene of the some of the Czech Republic’s most dramatic historic events and a frequent site of political protest.

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Danes and Czechs say easing lockdowns has produced no Covid-19 surge

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Encouraging signs from EU states who acted early, as South Korea reports no new cases

Denmark and the Czech Republic have said partially easing their lockdowns has not led to a surge in new coronavirus infections, as the WHO continued to urge extreme caution and Germany relaxed some restrictions but extended others.

As EU governments grappled with the complex and conflicting imperatives of easing the lockdowns crippling their economies while avoiding a disastrous second wave of infections, meanwhile, South Korea reported no new cases for the first time.

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Czech PM must resign if conflict of interest is confirmed, say MEPs

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Leaked report from stormy visit to Prague tells Andrej Babiš to stamp out ‘oligarchies’

The Czech government needs to stamp out “oligarchic structures” in the spending of European funds, a leaked EU report into an alleged conflict of interest centred on the country’s billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has concluded.

The report, by the European parliament’s budgetary control committee, calls on Babiš to stand down as prime minister or sell his business, if a conflict of interest is confirmed. Babiš should also renounce his seat at the table in upcoming negotiations on the European Union’s next seven-year budget “until his potential conflict of interests is fully resolved”, the MEPs say.

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Prague mayor under police protection amid reports of Russian plot

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Zdenêk Hřib says there is ‘risk to my life’ as magazine alleges he was poisoning target

The mayor of Prague has said he is under police protection from a “risk to my life”, with one Czech investigative outlet reporting he had been targeted in a Russian poisoning plot.

Zdeněk Hřib confirmed on Monday that police had placed him under protection several weeks ago after identifying a threat against him, but declined to say whether had been been targeted by Russia or reveal the nature of threat.

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Russia avoids ‘Boris Nemtsov Square’ address for its Prague embassy

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Embassy denies Czech claims it changed address because it bore murdered politician’s name

The Russian embassy in Prague has said it will not take an address on Boris Nemtsov Square after the plaza in front of the building was renamed to honour the Russian opposition politician who was murdered in 2015.

Czech media reported last week that the embassy had changed its official address in order to avoid the reference to Nemtsov, a critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in sight of the Kremlin.

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The exit strategy: how countries around the world are preparing for life after Covid-19

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As Australia makes plans to gradually lift its coronavirus lockdown, we look at what the rest of the world is doing

Australia has a road out of its coronavirus lockdown, long and winding though it may be.

Having warned repeatedly that this pandemic response was taking Australia into “uncharted territory”, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has leaned again on a navigational metaphor for our subsequent recovery.

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Russia opens criminal case after Czech officials remove Soviet statue

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Statue of Marshal Ivan Konev in Prague seen by some as symbol of communist rule

Russia has opened a criminal investigation after Czech authorities dismantled the statue of a Soviet military commander despite Moscow’s protests, escalating a diplomatic row over the issue.

The statue of Marshal Ivan Konev, who led the Red Army forces during the second world war that drove Nazi troops from Czechoslovakia, is reviled by some in Prague as a symbol of the decades of communist rule that followed the war.

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EU court rules three member states broke law over refugee quotas

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Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland failed to comply with 2015 programme, ECJ says

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke European law when they failed to give refuge to asylum seekers arriving in southern Europe, often having fled war in Syria and Iraq, the EU’s top court has ruled.

The three central European countries now face possible fines for refusing to take a share of refugees, after EU leaders forced through mandatory quotas to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.

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Czech village razed by Hitler at heart of row on truth and history

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Lidice’s survivors hit back at claims that Jewish woman was denounced to Nazis as academics resign over state interference

For more than three-quarters of a century, the story of Lidice has stood as haunting testimony of Czech suffering and victimhood at the hands of cruel Nazi occupiers.

The village, 16 miles from Prague, was razed to the ground, its adult male population murdered and its women and children transported to concentration camps – where the majority died – after Adolf Hitler singled it out in retribution for the assassination in 1942 of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy leader of the SS, by British-trained Czech and Slovak resistance fighters.

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‘Do not let this fire burn’: WHO warns Europe over coronavirus

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Europe now centre of pandemic, says WHO, as Spain prepares for state of emergency

The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.

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Czech new wave director Ivan Passer dies aged 86

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Passer was a key figure in the Czech new wave before moving to the US, where his best known film was the cult thriller Cutter’s Way

Ivan Passer, the film-maker who was a key figure in the Czech new wave and who went on to direct the thriller Cutter’s Way after emigrating to the US, has died aged 86. Variety reported that an associate of his family confirmed the news.

Passer, who was born in Prague in 1933, spent his career inextricably associated with, and to some extent overshadowed by, his friend and fellow Czech director Miloš Forman. The pair met as schoolboys and studied together at the Prague Film Academy; they both became part of a group of film-makers who took advantage of a slight weakening of the communist government’s iron grip in the late 50s and early 60s. “We were all united, one way or another, with desire to expose the regime on the screen,” Passer told the LA Times. “And we got away with it because the regime was melting.”

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