Czech daily news roundup: Thursday, December 30, 2021

Czech rally driver Karel Loprais, the six-time winner of the Dakar Rally in the truck category, died last night at the age of 72, his family announced. Loprais took part in the Dakar Rally for the first time in 1986 and won it two years later. In total, he won 11 medals in the Dakar Rally out of his 19 starts in the event. His last win was in 2001. He always competed in a Czech-made Tatra truck. In 2017, President Miloš Zeman presented a Medal of Merit to Loprais. His funeral will be held in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm. Moravia-Silesia Region, on Jan. 22.

The salaries of workers in social services and career soldiers will increase by CZK 700 a month next year, those in health care by 6 percent and in the teaching sphere by 2 percent, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after a government meeting yesterday. Besides, the government has decided to freeze the salaries of civil servants at ministries and other offices as well as all senior elected officials. Fiala said in the case of education workers, the government does not want the teachers' salaries to fall under 130 percent of the average salary.

A motorcade of historical cars of the type that the Czechoslovak military used in Britain set out across the east Bohemian places linked to the paratroopers' landing and operation, its final destination being Nehvizdy near Prague, which has a new monument to the Anthropoid airdrop protagonists. It was near Nehvizdy that two paratroopers landed 80 years ago at night on Dec. 29, 1941. Five months later, they carried out the attack on Heydrich. Defense Minister Jana Černochová and other guests unveiled the memorial there yesterday.

A man fell from the Vyšehrad walls in Prague yesterday afternoon. According to police, he tried to commit suicide. He survived the fall, rescuers stated that he was conscious and suffered multiple injuries to his head, abdomen, lower limbs, and chest. Firefighters first had to get the man out of very inaccessible terrain using climbing equipment. Trams on the embankment below Vyšehrad did not run for more than half an hour due to the intervention of the integrated rescue system. Rescuers took him to the intensive care at Vinohrady Hospital.

The Czech Republic will use its EU presidency in the second half of next year to foster the relations with the EU mainstream countries, European Affairs Minister Mikuláš Bek said in an interview for news agency Bloomberg. Said. “We have a system in place for pretty close cooperation with our counterparts in the Visegrád Group,” Bek said. “That’s good and it has been productive for us but we need to reach beyond that and create something similar with other countries too,” he added. “The Czech Republic sides with the EU against Poland and Hungary on issues ranging from the treatment of LGBTQ communities to the independence of the Polish judiciary,” Bek said.

The Czech Presidential Office expects President Milos Zeman to meet foreign statesmen mainly during their official visits to the country since doctors do not recommend long flights to him due to his health condition, his spokesman Jiří Ovčáček said. Besides, Zeman's foreign trips and visits by other country's supreme officials will be affected by the Covid pandemic situation in 2022 as well. "Even a quick glimpse at the websites of the presidential offices of the comparable countries indicates that both bilateral contacts and official visits by heads of state remain limited as a consequence of the pandemic situation," Ovčáček said.