Czech news in brief for May 14: Thursday's top afternoon headlines

Almost all deputies from the three ruling parties - ANO, SPD and Motorists - this afternoon voted against holding a congress of Sudeten Germans next week in Brno, calling on the organizers to withdraw the event from their program. Politicians from the opposition did not attend that session in parliament in protest against the vote, called at the initiative of the far-right SPD party.

Politicians from the opposition STAN party are planning a proposal to explicitly include a ban on drinking alcohol or using drugs in the internal rules of procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, Seznam Zpravy reports. Without naming names, authors of the text suggest some MPs are clearly inebriated during some debates and discussions, especially those running later in the evenings.

Several rivers in the South Bohemian region are facing a severe drought and report historically low water levels. Although the whole country is suffering from low rainfall, hydrologists from the České Budějovice Meteorological Institute warned that the situation in South Bohemia - a popular tourist destination in summer months - was the worst in the country.

Car production in the Czech Republic increased by seven percent in the first quarter of the year, with more than half a million passenger vehicles coming out of Czech-based manufacturers between January and April. About 40 percent of those were electric and hybrid cars, according to the Czech Automotive Industry Association, with the biggest manufacturers being Škoda Auto, Hyundai and Toyota.

With more than 400,000 readers in the last 12 months, Blesk remains the most read printed daily newspaper and magazine in the Czech Republic, despite a readership decrease of nearly 60,000. Second and third places go to Mladá front Dnes (374,000) and Sport (150,000). According to the Union of Czech Publishers, printed newspapers reached a little more than half of the population in the past year.