Czech people

The president is still to appoint the other 17 ministerial nominees. That's meant to be a formality, but Zeman is a master of turning such formalities into political drama.

The president has told the country that he plans to object to one ministerial nomination. While he didn't name anybody, the proposal of Jan Lipavsky as foreign minister is widely assumed to be the target.

Bartos doesn't speak like a politician either. While most are wary of saying the wrong thing, he talks ten to the dozen, linking from one topic to another endlessly, venturing into all sorts of areas. At the end of the interview, he asks that the swear words he let slip during these enthused passages be left out.

A 26-year-old evangelical Christian and theology student at Prague's Charles University, Roll founded Million Moments alongside Mikulas Minar in 2017. Dressed in his trademark mustard-yellow, it was the red-headed Minar who originally chaired the organisation and so featured prominently on the front pages as the biggest protests in the country since the Velvet Revolution erupted.

Faced with the prospect of a "complete catastrophe in the hospitals," the Czech Republic has announced a significantly tighter lockdown in an attempt to bring Covid-19 cases under control.

Two opposition coalitions, the centre-right Spolu and liberal Pirates/Stan, have been formed in recent months. Polls suggest each could win 20-25 per cent of the vote, around the same level to which ANO's support has declined amid the government's erratic handing of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Polls suggest that over two-thirds of Czechs approve of same-sex marriage, so it is little surprise that the centrist Ano party of Prime Minister Andrej Babis, which leads the minority governing coalition, offered its support to the bill. 

The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia took place Aug. 21, 1968, making this year the 49th anniversary of the event, The Daily Prague Monitor writes.

People over the weekend might have seen filming of a new movie about Jan Palach, with events being re-created around the city for the benefit of the cameras. The film should be released next year.