Czech morning news in brief: Top headlines for July 28, 2021

As day five of the Olympic Games in Tokyo begins, tennis player Markéta Vondroušová has a medal in singles within reach as she advances to the semifinals after beating Spains' Paula Badosa in today's quarterfinals. Doubles team Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková also advanced to the semifinals after winning a three-set quarterfinal against Australians Storm Sanders and Ash Barty. Lightweight double scull team Miroslav Vraštil and Jiří Šimánek advanced to Thursday's final. Today in basketball the Czech Republic men's team takes on France

Prague Filharmonic Advent Category + In Article

More and more Czechs are seeing pulmonologists with lung cancer in advanced stages and wrongly attributing symptoms to Covid-19, specialists in lung treatment told reporters today on Tuesday, July 27, World Lung Cancer Day. Modern technologies allow for the removal of a tumor in surgery in some 15 percent of cases. Doctors said they hoped the planned lung screening scheme would increase the share to 50 percent. Deputy Health Minister Martina Vasakova, president of the Czech Pulmonological and Phthisiological Society, said that in 85 percent of cases, people come for screenings too late. Lung cancer is confirmed in some 7,000 Czechs a year, while 5,500 succumb to the disease triggered by active or second-hand smoking in 90 percent. Doctors hope a lung cancer screening to be launched in the Czech Republic early next year could reveal up to 70 percent of early-stage tumors. Screenings will concern some 30,000 people aged 55 to 75 who smoke at least a pack a day.

Last year the number of commuters that traded Prague's public transport for its cycling networks was at an all-time high, according to the transport yearbook of the Technical Administration of Roads (TSK). Automatic counters located on cycle paths in more than two dozen places counted more than 4.45 million passes, which is almost 1.13 million more year-on-year. On the busiest A2 route at Povltavská Street, 426,843 cyclists were recorded near Troja Castle. This is a year-on-year increase of more than 80 percent. Compared to the year before, almost half as many cyclists also passed on the A2 at the intersection of Vltavanů and U kina streets in Modřany. The counters showed 417,486 crossings here. Both paths also hold the first place in the highest daily passage, namely 5,978 and 5,048 cyclists, respectively. TSK says the Covid pandemic and fear of public transport is behind the surging popularity in cycling.

The Chinese conglomerate CITIC Limited has sold its 55.8% stake in the Czech ad agency Médea for an undisclosed fee. Digizone reports that the transaction marks the end of Chinese investment in Jaromír Soukup media companies. Médea, which sells advertising on TV and in other media, had been majority owned by CITIC since last year. Broadband TV News notes that Jaromir Soukup’s interests include Empresa Media and TV Barrandov, one of the leading commercial broadcasters in the Czech Republic. Medea is one of the largest Czech media agencies. Soukup took it over in the late 1990s and built it as one of the main players on the Czech market. According to Nielsen Admosphere, advertising in the press last year was around CZK 17 billion, the volume of advertising on television exceeded 62 billion.

A study carried out on a sample of 1,200 respondents in December 2020 and April 2021 found the coronavirus epidemic had a negative effect on romantic relationships. The pilot study of the Contemporary Czech Family research project suggests that their quality assessment dropped from 8.3 in December 2020 to 7.8 in April. The research is run jointly by experts from Brno's Masaryk University and Charles University in Prague. The study shows a causality between the assessment of the relationship and worries about a potential job loss. Most polled who said it is likely or very likely that they lose their job within the next 12 months expressed a lower satisfaction with their relationship, too, while this link is stronger in men.