Czech farm files a criminal complaint against activists who exposed 'systemic animal cruelty'

In a new campaign, Czech activists want to draw attention to the suffering of chickens. The group Obránci zvířat (Animal defenders) published secretly taken photos and videos from three farms where "fast chickens" are kept. These are breeds of chickens that grow quickly to reach a size and weight that the chickens' legs cannot support. The farm in Blšany u Loun in the Ústí nad Labem Region is filing a criminal complaint for illegal trespassing, news server iDnes.cz reports.

Campaign coordinator Radim Trojan said a chicken in five weeks can reach a size of over two kilograms. "Their legs break under the onslaught of muscles, and often they cannot even reach food and die of hunger or thirst," he said.

Activists want to change the method of breeding in the Czech Republic. They say conditions in other European countries for raising chickens are changing for the better. The goal of the campaign is to get retail chains and other food companies in the Czech Republic to commit to stop accepting meat from fast chickens, according to iDnes.cz.

The unemployment rate in the European Union was 6 percent in June, the same level as in May. The lowest rate remains in the Czech Republic, where it decreased by a tenth of a percentage point to 2.4 percent compared to May, according to data published today by the European statistical office Eurostat.

Tennis player Marie Bouzková triumphed at this year's Livesport Prague Open tournament and claimed a career-first victory on the WTA circuit. She beat Russia's Anastasia Potapova 6:0, 6:3 in Sunday's final at the Sparta Prague courts in Stromovka. The 24-year-old Prague native, who was ranked 66th in the world before the tournament, became the fifth domestic winner of the Prague tournament since its inclusion on the WTA circuit.

Former prime Minister Andrej Babiš would win the first round of the presidential election with 25.5 percent of the vote, according to a Median poll conducted between mid-May and the start of July. Retired general Petr Pavel would finish behind him with 21 percent, followed by union leader Josef Středula at 9 percent. Meanwhile, economist and teacher Danuše Nerudová, at 7 percent, doubled her support at the beginning of the summer.

The remains of Czech-born Ivana Trump, the former wife of ex-president Donald Trump, were placed in a grave near the first hole at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The area could now be considered a cemetery, which would exclude it from tax liability. Donald Trump had explored the possibility of including a cemetery on the golf course as early as 2012, according to broadcaster NPR.

Ivana Trump, who died earlier this month at 73, is the first person known to have been buried at the golf course, where Donald Trump and his family spend a lot of time in the summers.

According to a preliminary police report, 33 people died in accidents on the roads in the Czech Republic in July, which is 12 fewer year on year. The last fatal accident of the first half of the summer holidays happened on Sunday in Děčín, where a motorcyclist crashed, reports ČTK. 

The Czech Republic is expected to see increasingly high temperatures this week according to the latest forecast by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. Sunday and Monday will see high temperatures in the upper 20s, and the heatwave will peak by Thursday with temperatures expected to reach up to 36 degrees Celsius.

With this weekend's heavy rains, a forest fire warning has been cancelled through most of the country, except for areas surrounding the Czech Switzerland national park, where fire continues to rage. A flood warning is in effect for select areas of Moravia, including a high degree of danger in the area of the Beskydy mountains.

Tennis star Marie Bouzková topped fellow Czech Linda Nosková 7-6, 6-3 in Prague Open semifinal action on Saturday to secure her place in the final match, which will be played today from 1:00 p.m. on TK Sparta Praha's Center Court in Stromovka. Bouzková will face Russia's Anastasia Potapova, who topped Wang Qiang on Saturday and knocked out top-seeded Anett Kontaveit on Friday.

Bouzková, who is seeded eighth in the tournament, has won every set she has played in this year's Prague Open; she will play for her very first WTA title in Prague this afternoon. In March, Bouzková defeated Potapova in three sets in a qualifying match for the Miami Open.

What's that bug? It could be an invasive species. A new project hopes to document sightings of potentially harmful insects in the Czech Republic, and you can help. Through Najdije.cz, anyone with a smartphone can take a picture of an unknown insect and upload it to a database for expert identification.

So far, users have uploaded more than 1,500 photographs of insects thought to be non-native to the Czech Republic, and more than 1,000 of them have been confirmed by experts to be invasive species. About ten different non-native species have been identified through the project, while a total of 39 invasive species are known to exist in the Czech Republic.

The Czech film festival Summer Film School officially kicked off its 48th season in Uherské Hradiště this weekend. This year's festival opened with a screening of the new documentary Michael Kocáb - Rocker versus Politician, a look at the Czech musician and political figure from celebrated filmmaker Olga Sommerová.

"During the revolution, he showed himself to be a good strategic thinker, he organized a lot of things, he had a lot of ideas," Sommerová said about Kocáb at the festival. "One of his great deeds was that he proposed and promoted Václav Havel as president." This year's Summer Film School will run through August 4. It is the largest and longest-running non-competitive film festival in the Czech Republic.

Czech tennis players Marie Bouzková and Linda Nosková have advanced to the semifinals at this year's Prague Open, which will conclude in the Czech capital on Sunday. Bouzková defeated Russia's Oksana Selechmeteva 6-3, 6-0 on Friday, while Nosková topped Japan's Nao Hibino 6-3, 4-2. The two Czech stars will face each other today at 1:30 p.m. on TK Sparta Praha's Center Court.

"Linda is a super player and another young Czech. I am therefore expecting a tough match," Bouzková told reporters after her victory on Friday. "From when we trained together for one day, I know that she plays quite aggressively." The winner of the Czech match will face the winner of a match between Russia's Anastasia Potapova and China's Wang Qiang on Sunday. Potapova knocked out top-seeded Anett Kontaveit on Friday.

About 60 millimeters of rainfall hit areas of Central and South Bohemia on Saturday morning, and more rain is in the forecast for these areas through Sunday. However, only a few millimeters of rain fell in Czech Switzerland as firefighters attempt to extinguish a forest fire that has raged in the area for the past week.

"The low pressure that passes over our territory and further to the east brings much-needed moisture," the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute wrote on Facebook. "During the last 24 hours, significant precipitation totals have occurred mostly due to a combination of thunderstorms and rain." Due to the rain, a fire warning has been cancelled through most of the country.

The alternative music festival Pop Messe kicked off its second year at the Za Lužánkami football stadium in Brno on Friday. Around 5,000 people are expected to attend the festival this weekend, according to festival spokesperson Radek Babička. Festival guests are predominantly young and also include foreigners, according to organizers.

As last year's festival was limited due to the pandemic, this is the first full-fledged edition of the Pop Messe festival. Czech rapper Smack One, local rockers Prago Union, American band Algiers, Ukrainian musician Morwan, Ugandan rapper MC Yellah, and British band Bicep are among the performers at the festival, which runs through Sunday.

Prices at Czech ice cream parlors have increased across the board this year, according to an informal survey conducted by the Czech News Agency. Prices at popular Prague parlors Puro Gelato and Crème de la Crème have risen by about ten percent over last year, according to their managers, while prices at Adria Gold, which supplies about 900 parlors across the country, are up about 30 percent year-on-year.

The Prague parlors have not reported a decrease in sales this year, though some flavors have had to be taken off the menu due to supply shortages. "We were forced to remove some types of ice cream due to the lack of some raw materials," said Crème de la Crème manager Jan Hochsteiger. "Supplier outages are now totally common, while they practically did not exist before Covid." 

A 69-year-old Czech tourist who had been missing for two days has been found dead in Slovakia's Tatra mountains, Slovak news channel TA3 reported on Friday evening. The tourist most likely fell down the mountain, according to police spokesperson Daniel Džobanik.

Police had been searching for the man for the past two days with the help of a drone and sniffer dogs. One of the dogs ultimately found the body in the Small Cold Valley at the base of the mountains. A spokesperson for mountain rescue services told TA3 that the death was caused by a fall, but the distance of the fall was not known.