Czech morning headlines: Wednesday, June 15, 2022

The police raided several public offices in Prague Wednesday morning. According to Czech news server iDnes.cz this includes Prague City Hall and the city's transport company. The National Headquarters against Organized Crime (NCOZ) confirmed the news without providing further details. Prague City Hall, spokesperson Vít Hofman, told ČTK that City Hall provides maximum cooperation. Server Seznam Zprávy wrote that the criminal proceedings are taking place in the office of Deputy Mayor Petr Hlubuček.

The Czech Senate should call on the European Council to grant EU candidate status to Ukraine, which has been facing Russian aggression for almost four months, the chairman of its foreign committee, Pavel Fischer, told reporters yesterday. The upper house should approve the appeal on Wednesday, after the scheduled address of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to both houses of the Czech parliament.

A man who shot his wife and son dead and committed suicide in Javornice, in the East Bohemia region on Monday was a Czech soldier a police spokesperson told ČTK Tuesday. The three dead bodies found in a house in Javornice on Monday belong to a professional soldier of the Czech military, 31, who shot dead his wife, 32, their four-year-old son, and finally himself, supposedly due to family issues, the spokesperson said. The man, who was also a hunter did not use his service arm. The Defense Ministry has not confirmed that he was one of its soldiers.

The meeting of the European Council will be held on June 22-23. Because of the unanimous consensus required to grant the country candidate status, the Senate proposes the criteria be softened. The Senate position states that the Russian invasion has destabilized the European continent and caused the current economic crisis.

Following a similar move by Google, Apple has deleted Uloz.to from its App Store. The removal of the file-sharing service was based on reports by the anti-piracy platform Weemazz 2.0. Jan Karabina, CEO of Uloz.to told ČTK the deletion is "an abuse of the process on platforms of this type in order to damage our data store, which works in full compliance with Czech and European law." He said the process of reporting and removing applications from these platforms isn't properly regulated.

Families with an annual gross income under one million crowns will probably get a CZK 5,000 one-off bonus per child under 18 as of August, the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament, agreed on Tuesday. Proposals by the opposition to offer repeat bonuses and broaden the age of eligibility didn't pass. The draft amendment has now been forwarded to the Senate. According to the government documents, some 1.56 million children could receive the benefit.

The Rock for People festival began at the airport in Hradec Králové Tuesday. Organizers anticipated over 30,000 people will attend the event, which will last until June 18. Four-day tickets have already sold out and the only way to attend the festival is to purchase a one-day ticket. According to the festival organizers, the 26th year of the festival marks a turning point, with the event's budget exceeding CZK 100 for the first time.

In the first month since its opening, 45,000 people crossed the longest suspension bridge in the world, Sky Bridge 721, in Dolní Moravia. The number of visitors thus exceeded the investor's expectations. Thanks to massive promotion, including CzechTourism, the bridge attracts tourists from all over the world, Czech, Polish, Dutch, German, and English have come to brave the bridge. The bridge opened on May 13. It has an altitude of 95 meters, with a length of 721 meters.

A tornado reaching an estimated 150 km/hour hit the Břeclav locality in South Moravia, on Monday evening, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, said Tuesday. The disaster damaged some 30 houses in Lanžhot, but the damage level has not yet been calculated. Firefighters assisted in over 40 cases in the Břeclav area and in almost 60 in the entire region due to the extreme weather conditions last night. Officials say the uprooting of trees in the area and other damage indicates a tornado of this speed.

Traffic data showed that after the start of the renovation of the Barrandov Bridge, traffic in Prague changed only minimally, and although an increase in traffic was recorded in some places, these are in the order of minutes even at peak times compared to the usual situation. Of the monitored places, the Komořanská road shows the largest increase in driving time, where the average delay is approximately five minutes higher than in rush hours before the start of the reconstruction.

The Bratislava Regional Court dismissed former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš's lawsuit claiming that he was registered as the former Czechoslovak communist secret police (StB) agent in their files unrightfully, in reopened proceedings today. In step with the Slovak Constitutional Court's previous decision, the regional court argued that the lawsuit should have targeted the Slovak Interior Ministry not the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN) in Slovakia. Babiš has repeatedly denied having collaborated with the StB.

The number of disinformation websites focusing mainly on pro-Kremlin propaganda and Covid dropped by six to 46 in Czechia last year, but the number of articles these sites published, 195,238, was almost the same as in 2020, the European Values Center for Security Policy announced in its annual report today. The center said it expects another rise in activity as these websites were until recently blocked for their support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Last year, the web design and content became more sophisticated, and direct communication with readers intensified, the center said.

The city's economy in the first quarter of this year ended with a surplus of CZK 4.4 billion, roughly the same year on year. Revenues reached approximately CZK 24.65 billion and expenditures approximately CZK 20.2 billion. The city has spent over CZK 2 billion on investments, slightly more than last year. The majority of expenditures were current expenditures, which reached about CZK 18.2 billion. Capital expenditures climbed over CZK 2.1 billion in the first quarter. The city invested the most money, some CZK 513 million, in transport. For this year, the capital has an approved budget with revenues and expenditures of CZK 92.6 billion, which is more year-on-year.