Czech morning news in brief: top headlines for June 1, 2021

Supporters of the Million Moments for Democracy movement will march in Prague Tuesday against what it calls an unjust Czech government, particularly the actions of Minister of Justice Marie Benešová (ANO). Protesters will march through the center of Prague to an assembly on Wenceslas Square. Organizers continue to demand Benešová's resignation. According to them, the new chief prosecutor should be appointed by the new government. If their demands are not met, they plan to continue the protests for a week in the regions and on June 20 will convene a large demonstration in Prague. Similar protests took place 14 days ago in Prague and two weeks ago in several dozen cities. Today's demonstration will begin at 5:30 pm in Albertov; participants will march to the Ministry of Justice.

The Chamber of Commerce criticized a proposal under which foreigners with permanent residence in the Czech Republic could have their commercial health insurance only from the Pojišťovna VZP insurance company in the next five years. The Chamber of Commerce considers this an attempt to nationalize a part of the insurance market and calls on the lower house of parliament to reject the plan, proposed by ANO MPs. The Chamber of Commerce noted that Pojišťovna VZP is a daughter company of the state-controlled VZP, which is the biggest health insurance company in the country, four other insurance companies, Ergo, Maxima, Slavia, and Uniqa, provide health insurance for foreigners who are EU citizens or citizens of some other countries. ANO MP argued that Pojišťovna VZP has contracts with the biggest network of healthcare providers.

Eleven people were injured in a public bus crash in Brno Monday night when the bus drove into a public lighting pole. Three people were seriously injured. Rescuers took the wounded to the hospital. The accident happened in the Komín district on a four-lane road near the Komín depot. The 11 injured were treated, three of them were severely injured and the rest had minor to moderate injuries such as head or limb injuries. Several rescuers intervened on the spot. The cause of the accident could be the driver's medical condition or a technical defect. The damage is estimated at CZK 3.25 million.

An Oxford University professor spent years in the 1980s providing sensitive information about British and U.S. nuclear research to secret service agents from her native communist Czechoslovakia the British tabloid Daily Mail has written. It cites newly declassified files from the security services' archive in Prague and quotes Professor Jiřina Stone as saying that she handed over only insignificant information to the agents and that she had to do so in order to prevent the communist regime from taking revenge on her children. Stone handed over sensitive information to Czechoslovak secret services after her emigration to Britain in the 1980s. She also copied some of the secret documents of her British husband, also an Oxford academic and nuclear scientist. He did not know about her activities, Daily Mail writes. Operating under the codename Marta, she used "clandestine rendezvous" to hand over information. Now 82, Stone is still a visiting researcher at Oxford University and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee, where she moved after retirement from Oxford.

A young Finnish forest reindeer was born in the Liberec Zoo this month. The zoo started breeding the endangered Nordic ungulate, a species found in the wild in just two isolated populations, each with about 1,000 specimens. The zoo has a male Finnish forest reindeer and two females, one of whom had offspring last year. The zoo calls the birth "a big surprise and a small miracle." The zoo has also succeeded in breeding the Przewalski horse, which became extinct in the wild in the 1960s. Six young horses have been born there in the past three years, including two earlier this month. Out of the previously born colts, three mares recently left for the zoo in Grunau, Austria.

#daily news