The Daily Dozen: 12 things to know about Czechia today

The Czech Republic has eased the visa rules for Ukrainians who received temporary protection in a different EU country to ask for temporary visas in the Czech Republic. Belarusians who are the recipients of university fellowships provided by the Czech Republic, the EU or international organizations are also eligible for the visa exemptions.

Also yesterday, the Czech government approved an entry ban for Russians with valid Schengen visas for the purpose of tourism, sport, and culture issued by any EU country as of Oct. 25. Read more here.

A vigil for victims of a possibly hate-motivated shooting at a gay café and bar in Bratislava will took place at the Slovak embassy today. The shooting, which took place at the LGBTQ+ café and bar Tepláreň in the center of Bratislava yesterday left two men dead on the spot and a waitress injured. The shooter was found dead by the police on Thursday morning. Czech PM Petr Fiala condemned the shooting and send condolences to the victims' families. Read more here.

Czechia was one of 15 NATO states that signed a declaration on joining and co-purchasing an anti-aircraft defense system, according to German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. The countries approved the project, which is informally known as the "European Sky Shield Initiative," on the sidelines of an ongoing meeting of EU defense ministers in the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Read more here.

"Marketa Lazarova" is the best Czech New Wave movie of all time, according to a ranking created by MovieWeb. The ranking also includes classics such as “The Sun in a Net,” “Loves of a Blonde,” and “Beauty and the Best.” As MovieWeb notes, Czechoslovakia’s movie industry in the 1960s and 1970s “produced cinema that was at once revolutionary and internationally renowned.” 

In spite of a plethora of photographs and videos of the horrors of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian propaganda has won over a segment of the population in Czechia, Roman Máca from the Institute for Politics and Society told Czech Radio. "Based on the data, we know that 4 percent of Czechs are pro-Russian, and another 10 percent accept Russian narratives that Ukraine has never been a sovereign country and that Russia is only defending its interests," Máca says.

The Czech Republic will push for a special EU financial package for countries that accept the largest number of Ukrainian war refugees, ČTK reports. Czech Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Minister Marian Jurečka made the announcement today before the start of two-day meeting of EU labor ministers in Prague, and added that the existing mechanism of transferring money between funds is not enough to cope with the refugee wave.

The offices of Poetizer, the world’s largest social network for poets and poetry lovers, "are minimalist yet romantic, much like the company itself," the design website Dornob writes. Located on the fourth floor of a First Republic building on Narodni Street in Prague, the offices were the work of architect Tomáš Císař and designer Johana Sedláčková Vamberská.

At their center is a "beautiful indoor greenhouse space, a wild jungle, a mythical Eden, an area that expresses the concept of wild thinking,” Císar told Dornob.

The Czech culture and creative sector could receive CZK 5.45 billion via the national recovery and resilience plan by 2025, Culture Minister Martin Baxa said yesterday according to ČTK. So far, projects of the National Gallery, the Goethe Institute and the Art Gate production group, all seated in Prague, have received subsidies from the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The plan represents reforms and investments that Czechia wants to implement using EU finances.

The Ministry of Finance announced that 16.9 CZK billion had been spent by the Czech state in assisting Ukrainian refugees since February this year, as reported by ČTK. The original estimate for the total annual expenditure on refugee-related aid is CZK 25 billion - the total figure will likely be lower by end-December.

Healthcare expenses for Ukrainian refugees equaled CZK 3.5 billion and accommodation costs came to CZK 2.4 billion. More than 120,000 Ukrainian migrants are currently employed in Czechia, contributing to the economy.

The Czech Banking Association (ČBA) revealed that the interest rate for new mortgages increased marginally to 5.83 percent in September, from 5.73 percent in August, as cited by ČTK.

The rising mortgage rates - at their highest point in over 12 years - are synchronous with a huge decline in the numbers of mortgages being taken out. The "volume of newly granted mortgages in September reached the weakest level since the beginning of 2014," stated Jakub Seidler, the chief economist of the ČBA.

The year-on-year fall in mortgages in September stands at over 80 percent. Massive inflation, and skyrocketing rent and purchase prices in the real estate market, underpin the cause of these figures.

Adam Ondra, a well-known Czech rock climber and winner of multiple world championships, will auction off eight climbing holds (small rock-sized items used on climbing walls) to raise money for Ukraine amid the current war-time crisis. Ondra made the holds himself and signed all of them.

All monies raised from the auction will go to Memory of Nations, a fundraiser for providing equipment that “saves lives and increases safety of Ukraine’s defenders," according to the project, which has impressively raised more than CZK 339 million so far.

The holds start from EUR 199 (CZK 4,900) and you can find them here.

History buffs would revel in a trip to Czechia's capital, Compare The Market reports. A wordwide ranking put Prague in third position, behind Rome and Beijing, with an overall "historical ranking score" of 7.39/10.

Variables used to calculate cities' overall rankings included numbers of museums, landmarks, the average cost of a taxi and the level of safety. Prague scored particularly highly in terms of safety - beating the likes of Paris and London - and had one of the largest number of museums out of all featured countries, at 377.

The index showed that Tokyo had the highest number of historic sites, at 629, and Rome had the largest amount of historic walking areas, at 50.