Czech morning news in brief: top headlines for April 13, 2021

A new government commission will be established to analyze the impact of the European Green Deal on the Czech Republic, Deputy Prime Minister Karel Havlíček said after a Tripartite Council meeting Monday, adding that it's a question of whether representatives of environmental organizations should be among the commission members. Havlíček said the Green Deal commission would be similar to the Coal Commission, which recommended the year 2038 as the coal exit date for the country last December. The Green Deal is the European Commission's initiative for climate protection and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Its aim is to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. The estimated costs of the actions taken to meet the Green Deal were estimated at CZK 10 billion which is seven annual Czech state budgets. The commission members should be known in advance of the next Tripartite Council meeting June 21.

The Czech military is likely to have another woman join the rank of general, as the cabinet proposed the promotion of colonel Zuzana Kročová, the Defence University rector, to President Miloš Zeman today, along with the promotion of eight male candidates. Some of the candidates are generals who should be promoted to a higher general's rank. "All the candidates deserve recognition because they have for a long time proved to be among the best career soldiers the Czech armed forces have," Defence Minister Lubomír Metnar said. The only woman to become general so far is Lenka Šmerdová whom Zeman promoted to the top rank four years ago.

The funeral of Czech mogul Petr Kellner was held last weekend, PPF's public relations chief Vladimír Mlynář tweeted Monday. The funeral took place in the garden of Kellner’s villa in Prague-Dejvice. Kellner died on March 27 at the age of 56 in a helicopter crash while heli-skiing in Alaska. A private PPF aircraft transported Kellner’s remains to the Czech Republic on Friday and the plane symbolically flew over his home town of Česká Lípa. The pilot and four of the five heli-skiers died aboard the March 27 crash. The only survivor is former Czech professional snowboarder David Horvath who says that no technical defect but a coincidence of unfortunate circumstances, weather and landing conditions was likely behind the crash. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is likely to release a preliminary report on the accident on Tuesday, April 13.

The Crème de la Crème online week of French films kicks off in the Czech Republic this week via the Edisonline virtual cinema and runs through April 18, featuring four premieres and the opening film "Delete History," a comedy on modern technology issues, which was awarded the Silver Bear at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. The festival features a large variety of genres ranging from drama to children's movies and horror comedies. After it closes, the festival will join the #kinaspolu (#cinematogether) project where money spent on tickets support cinemas closed over the coronavirus epidemic.

The ZIS 110 B car driven by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin during his visit to Prague on April 28, 1961 (his first foreign trip after his historic flight to the outer space) is part of the collection of Prague's National Technical Museum (NTM), a museum spokesman said on the 60th anniversary of Gagarin flight on Monday. Closed due to the Covid pandemic, NTM currently offers a virtual tour. The open parade cars ZIS 110 appeared at military parades in the then Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s. After U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a Packard Super Eight model to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the latter decided that the Soviet manufacturers should construct a similar type of car. Crowds of hundreds of thousands of people welcomed Gagarin during his visit to Prague. He was also received and decorated by President Antonín Novotný