News: Friday, July 26th, 2024

Fiala arrives in Paris for opening of Czech House at Olympic Games

Prime Minister Petr Fiala arrived in Paris on Friday for the official opening ceremony at the Czech House in the French capital’s La Villette park. He was welcomed there to the sound of live music by the head of the Czech Olympic Committee, Jiří Kejval.

The Czech House is intended to serve as a base for Czech fans who have come to Paris to watch the Games and as a place for them to meet competing Czech athletes. It will be open to the public from 5.30pm on Friday. The official Olympic Games opening ceremony is due to kick off two hours later.

Transport minister: first section of high-speed railway to begin construction next year

Work on building the first section of a planned network of high-speed railway lines in Czechia is due to begin next year, Transport Minister Martin Kupka said on Friday at a conference in Prague for entrepreneurs in the construction industry. The first section of the high-speed network will connect the South Moravian capital of Brno with the town of Přerov in the Olomouc Region. Trains on this new network should be able to travel at speeds of up to 320 kilometres per hour.

Work on the next section between Brno and Břeclav, a town in the South Moravian Region close to the border with Slovakia and Austria, is planned for 2026, while a third route to the Moravian-Silesian Region is scheduled to start in 2028 at the latest. If everything goes well, the construction of the Prague part of the high-speed network should start in 2030, the minister said.

The construction of high-speed railway lines in the country has been discussed since the 1990s, but concrete preparations only started in recent years.

Czech ambassador to Jordan dismissed over "managerial failure"

The Czech ambassador to Jordan, Alexandr Sporýš, has been dismissed by Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský due to "a managerial failure", Foreign Ministry spokesperson Daniel Drake told the Czech News Agency on Friday. Mr. Sporýš replaced Josef Koutský as ambassador to Jordan last summer.

According to news site Deník N's sources, the reasons for the dismissal were that the embassy in Amman had "ceased to function" under Sporýš's leadership, with employee complaints, bullying and the premature departure of the ambassador's deputy being cited.

Mr. Sporýš himself has denied any instances of bullying and stated that he was not aware of any staff problems at the embassy. He told Deník N that his deputy left for health reasons.

Krejčíková and Siniaková triumph at Prague Open before setting off for Paris Olympics

Tennis players Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková won the doubles final at the WTA Prague Open on Friday, in advance of their departure for the Paris Olympic Games. They beat the Czech-American duo of Lucie Šafářová and Bethanie Mattek-Sands 6:3, 6:3 on clay at TK Sparta Prague.

On Saturday they will begin defending their Olympic title from the Tokyo Games in 2021 with a first-round duel against the Taiwanese pair Chan Hao-ching (also known as Angel Chan) and Latisha Chan in Paris.

This was Krejčíková and Siniaková's first time playing together as a doubles team since last November, when they took a break at Siniaková's instigation.

Czech wrestler Omarov forced to drop out of Olympics

The Czech wrestler Artur Omarov has been forced to drop out of the Olympics due to an Achilles injury. The athlete sustained the injury in training and underwent surgery before his planned departure for Paris, the Czech Olympic Committee said in a statement.

Tennis player Markéta Vondroušová, who took silver at the last Olympics in Tokyo, had earlier been forced to pull out of the Games due to a hand injury.

The number of Czech athletes competing in Paris now stands at 111.

Fiftieth Uherské Hradiště Summer Film School begins

The Summer Film School at Uherské Hradiště gets underway on Friday for the 50th time. Among the guests at this year’s edition will be French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin, Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi and veteran Czech actor and musician Jiří Suchý.

The event, which draws thousands of visitors to the Moravian town annually, will open with the world premiere of Hello, Welcome by Czech director Šimon Holý.

Weather forecast

Extremely hot weather is expected in Czechia on Saturday. The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute has issued a warning that temperatures could reach up to 33 degrees Celsius and in South Moravia even as high as 35 degrees Celsius.