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CZECH REPUBLIC
- The Czech Republic will buy 52 new Caesar artillery pieces from French group Nexter Systems for 8.5 billion crowns to replace older howitzers dating back to the 1970s, the Defence Ministry said on Monday. Defence Minister Lubomir Metnar said on Twitter a contract would be signed by the end of September.
- The Czech Republic will continue the practice of advancing clocks during the warmer months so that darkness falls at a later time for at least the next five years. Daylight saving time was to have been discontinued in the European Union in 2019 but member states failed to agree on a single time.
- The son of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Andrej Babiš Jr., was questioned by police in Prague for over six hours on Monday in connection with a case surrounding a conference centre built by his father. The PM is facing charges of subsidy fraud in connection with the Stork’s Nest complex and his son was previously also charged over the matter.
WORLD
- The Lithuanian government said on Monday work would start this month on the first section of fence along the Belarus border aimed at keeping out migrants, a 110 km stretch topped with razor wire that should be finished by April. More than 4,100 migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Asia, have entered Lithuania this year.
- Pope Francis, at a memorial to the more than 100,000 Slovak Jews killed in the Holocaust, said on Monday that it was shameful how people who said they believed in God perpetrated or permitted “unspeakable acts of inhumanity”. At a ceremony at a spot where a synagogue was demolished during the post-war communist era, the pope said the real reason was because “they wanted to cancel every trace of the (Jewish) community.”
