Czech news in brief for August 13: Thursday's top morning headlines

Czechia caught a rare partial solar eclipse last night, with one crew watching it from a hot-air balloon over Brno, while new state data confirmed just how deadly June's heat wave was. Meanwhile, senators are moving to sink a major overhaul of the building permit system. Good morning, here's your headline mix.

Hundreds gathered at Prague's Štefánik Observatory on Petřín Hill and at watch events nationwide for Wednesday evening's partial solar eclipse, which peaked around 8:10 p.m. with the Moon covering more than 85 percent of the Sun's disk in western and southern Bohemia. In Brno, three astronomers and a pilot took the view airborne, livestreaming from a hot-air balloon basket rigged with four cameras after wind forced a last-minute launch-site change near Pernštejn Castle.

By the numbers: This was the country's largest eclipse since August 1999, and the next one of similar size will not come around again for nearly 50 years, in 2075.

Three Senate committees have recommended rejecting the government's amendment to the Building Act, which aims to speed up permitting under a "one office, one procedure, one stamp" model; opposition senators call the bill unfixable and object to it arriving as a parliamentary rather than a government proposal, bypassing standard expert review. A final vote is expected next week, and the coalition has signaled it is prepared to override a Senate rejection.

Why it matters here: The bill is one of the government's central levers for addressing the housing shortage, alongside a rental-support program that has already drawn triple the demand its original budget covered.

Prague's Municipal Court has finalized a ruling ordering Simply Service Rent, a firm with a Cyprus-based anonymous owner and Russian managing director, to pay back rent on a Soviet-era office and apartment complex the USSR built on state land in Prague's Stodůlky district under a 1980 agreement.

Bigger picture: The Diplomatic Service has a second, related lawsuit over use of the land now before the same court, set to begin hearing Thursday, after the government canceled several Soviet-era resolutions in 2023 that had let Russia use such land for free.

New CZSO mortality data show roughly 2,300 deaths in the week of the June heat wave, about 10 percent above the 15-year average for that week and the highest single-week toll the agency has recorded in that time series, on par only with a comparable spike in 2013, another exceptionally hot year. The wave peaked June 28, when Doksany in the Litoměřice region hit a record 41.9°C. Czechia's toll was proportionally smaller on a European scale.

Context: Researchers note the country is adapting; wider air conditioning access and better healthcare are cited as reasons the same heat produces fewer deaths now than it once did, even as heat waves themselves grow more frequent.

Saturday brings the peak of the current heat wave, with highs up to 36°C, but Czech Hydrometeorological Institute forecasts show clouds, showers, and a real cooldown moving in from Monday, with highs dropping into the low-to-mid 20s by midweek.

Is summer over? Czech forecasters see the cooling as a genuine break rather than a firm seasonal turn, with warmer, above-average conditions still expected to return by early September.

Trdelník test finds hot spots and cold ones. iDNES.cz's tour of trdelník stands found wildly inconsistent quality nationwide, from a rock-hard version in Teplice to one so hot in Hradec Králové it was nearly impossible to hold, with hygiene gaps at nearly every stop but one.

Alza cancels orders after huge discount event. The Czech retailer's "Alza Days" promised discounts up to 80 percent, but the company has been mass-canceling paid orders, in some cases even after customers were told their goods were ready for pickup. Alza says it was a mistake.

Letní Letná opens for its 23rd year. Prague's new-circus festival kicks off on Letná with more than 200 performances through August 21, marking two decades of introducing Czech audiences to a genre that once needed elephants on the poster to get attention.