The Daily Dozen: 12 things to know about Czechia today

The average price of a lunch in Prague was CZK 195 in September, and likely to rise over CZK 200 the near future, Seznam Zprávy reports, citing data from the Sodexo Benefits, which is the largest provider of benefits, including meal vouchers, in the Czech Republic.

The average price of lunch across the Czech Republic for that month stood at CZK 172, with the lowest prices in the Olomouc and Vysočina region, both around CZK 152. Restaurant prices are a reflection of rising prices for energy, rent, fuel, raw materials, and salaries.

Scientists from the Faculty of Agronomy at Brno’s Mendel University found evidence that naturally occurring lactobacilli bacteria can catalyze the composting of food waste, Brno Daily reports. Ester Kovaříková from the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Mendel University said she "mainly worked with two groups of microorganisms that have the metabolic potential to enter the composting process," and found "lactobacilli, naturally occurring bacteria, to be the best.”

Representatives of ODS, Together for Budějovice, Pirates and South Bohemia 2012 signed a coalition agreement that would make Dagmar Škodová Parmová the mayor of České Budějovice, ČTK reports. The newly minted coalition has 23 votes out of 45 in the council. She is the first woman to hold the position in the city's history. She replaced Jiří Svoboda of ANO, who had been in charge for eight years. 

Seven teams have so far applied for funds under a project called Support of the State Representation of Women's Team Sports at the 2028 Olympic Games, Metro.cz reports. The project, which the National Sports Agency (NSA) announced following a disappointing performance at last year's Tokyo Olympic Games, gave the teams a total of CZK 150 million.

Jakub Večerka, spokesperson of the NSA, said that the reactions to the project have positive, not just in Czechia, "but especially from international sports federations, which greatly acknowledge this support."

A number of Czech football teams, such as SK Sigma Olomouc, are in favor of only playing games in daylight to save electricity costs, Metro.cz reports. Still, as Tomáš Čarnogurský, head of communications for Sigma, notes, such changes "are under the authority of the League Football Association, which decides on them collectively."

The winter schedule, where games start at 3 p.m., could work well for televised matches without the need for electric lighting, David Solnař, spokesman for O2 TV Sport, said.

Czech energy company ČEZ could resort to international arbitration after suffering damage in the hundreds of millions to billions of crowns due to outages in Russian supplies, ČTK reports, citing Chairman of the Board and CEO of ČEZ Daniel Beneš. This also means that negotiations of supplies for next year with a Russian electricity supplier is off the table.

Almost 80 percent of Czechs would like to die at home, a wish that can be easier to fulfill thanks to mobile hospices, according to Deník N. Zdeňa Znamenáčková, who used the services of Hospic sv. Štěpána Litoměřice to assist her husband in his last days of life, said that nurses and caregivers from the hospice came to her regularly, even at night, and gave her valuable advice. "Even a relative wouldn't help you like that because they wouldn't know what to do," Znamenáčková says.

Ongoing repairs of tram lines at Karlovo náměstí are the first of their kind in 12 years, which made them all the more necessary, iDnes.cz reports. "This is the second busiest section of the DPP tram network in Prague, through which trams pass every 60 seconds in each direction during peak hours, said Miroslav Penc, head of the DPP Tramway Transport Route unit. Penc added that this translates into a high rate of wear of the rail, making the repairs all the more important before the arrival of inclement weather. For more information, read here.

The rate of mental illnesses among Ukrainian refugees is four times higher than that in the general Czech population, ČTK reports. Additionally, although 45 percent of Ukrainian refugees suffer from depression and anxiety, only 3 percent of them use expert aid focused on mental health, mostly because they don't know how to access it.

The findings come from a study conducted by the PAQ Research company, the National Institute of Mental Health and the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and released by the Voice of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic.

A poll conducted by ČTK showed that Senator Marek Hilšer, entrepreneur Karel Janeček, economist Danuše Nerudová, General Petr Pavel, trade union activist Josef Středula, and the former chairwoman of the Energy Regulation Office Alena Vitásková are all in favor of a pro-NATO and pro-EU course for the Czech Republic, as well as closer ties with the U.S. Read more here.

If the skies are clear tomorrow, a partial solar eclipse where the moon covers up to 40 percent of the sun could be visible from the territory of the Czech Republic, Lidovky.cz reports. The eclipse is visible to parts of Europe, North-east Africa, and Asia. Another partial solar eclipse will happen in 2025, while a total eclipse visible from the Czech Republic will only happen in 2135.

Figures released by the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) today indicate that consumer confidence in Czechia has hit its lowest level since the beginning of records, in January 2005. The CZSO’s consumer confidence indicator, designed to display the levels of confidence and optimism that consumers have in the economy, declined by 0.8 points in October, to 71.9, a huge decline from earlier in 2022, when it had reached a calendar-year high of 91.7 in February, and from October 2021, when it stood at 101.3. Read more here.