Fight between the Haves And the Have-Nots Heats Up In the Czech Republic
NEED TO KNOW
Fight between the Haves And the Have-Nots Heats Up In the Czech Republic
CZECH REPUBLIC
Former Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blažek thought he was practicing good public relations in May when he announced the sale of 500 bitcoins for $46.7 million to digitize the Central European country’s judicial system, crack down on drugs in prisons, and secure housing for prison staff.
But Czechs soon discovered that the funds were a portion of 1,500 bitcoins worth $163 million that the Czech government had seized from notorious violent drug trafficker Tomáš Jiřikovský. Convicted in 2017, Jiřikovský had been trying to reclaim his cryptocurrency since he left prison in 2021. As Le Monde explained, Blažek gave Jiřikovský two-thirds of the seized cryptocurrency in return for the felon “donating” a third of the funds to the government.
The minister wound up resigning as a result of the scandal, which the Economist described as good news for the “Czech Donald Trump” – Andrej Babiš, the former far-right, populist prime minister who is now seeking to return to power.
Opposition parliamentarians allied with Babiš quickly called a no-confidence vote in the conservative coalition government of current Prime Minister Petr Fiala, the Associated Press reported. The move was one of many such moves in the country’s dysfunctional parliament, analysts said.
Fiala survived the vote, but Babiš’s allies are expected to win a majority in a particularly sensitive general election for a new parliament in early October.
A billionaire, Babiš is a Euroskeptic who has resisted Western political pressure to enact measures against Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine. He has pledged to defy American President Donald Trump’s demand that NATO countries spend 5 percent of their gross domestic products on their militaries, for instance.
“I’m a politician working for the Czech people and we are not subordinates, and maybe somebody has to explain to Mr. Trump that 5 percent is not realistic,” Babiš told the Financial Times. “If Trump says that I have to jump from the window, I will not jump.’’
Babiš is under pressure, too, though. He needs to make sure small parties that would support him garner at least 5 percent of the vote in order to qualify for parliamentary seats, the Polish publicly owned news service TVP World wrote. Otherwise, he might need to partner with Japanese-Czech entrepreneur Tomio Okamura’s far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy political party.
Okamura’s party promotes “Czexit,” or the country leaving the European Union, Euractiv reported. He would also ban the “promotion” of Islam and crack down on migrants, including Ukrainian refugees in the country. Babiš doesn’t necessarily want the headaches that partnering with Okamura might bring, however.
Still, Babiš and his party are ahead in the polls, four years after being ousted by a public and their representatives fed up with his shenanigans – during his administration, the country saw the largest anti-government protests since the 1989 revolution.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult to beat Babiš,” Otto Eibl, a political scientist at Masaryk University in Brno, told Balkan Insight. “The mood in the public is very bad right now towards Fiala and SPOLU, the Czech center-right political alliance composed of the Civic Democratic Party, KDU-ČSL, and TOP 09, that governs the country. We could say that roughly half of the population hates them, while the other half feels disappointed by them.”
“The population doesn’t really want to remember Babiš’ first (term),” he added. “They mostly remember that they were getting more for their money’s worth than they do today – and that’s what matters.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
‘Dark Day’: EU Leaders Criticize US Trade Deal as Unfair
EUROPEAN UNION
France and other European countries on Monday heaped scorn on a new trade deal between the European Union and the US, calling it a “dark day” for Europe, and complaining that the bloc surrendered to the US and received an unbalanced agreement, Reuters reported.
“It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission,” French Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote on X.
According to the deal announced over the weekend, which followed months of negotiations, the US will impose a 15 percent tariff on most imports from the EU – one of the US’ top trading partners – half of the previously threatened rate, the Washington Post wrote.
Meanwhile, the EU will not place additional tariffs on the US under the current deal.
US President Donald Trump also said that, according to the deal, the EU will purchase $750 billion in energy and invest more in the US, as well as increase its purchase of US military equipment.
Bayrou’s criticism followed months of France urging the EU to adopt a firmer approach toward Trump, including the threat of retaliatory measures.
The bloc, which behaves as a single market on trade, has held off retaliatory tariffs for months, hoping trade talks would be successful. However, the EU also had a backup plan consisting of a list of more than $100 billion worth of US goods to tax if talks failed.
France’s reaction stood in sharp contrast to the softer line advocated by Germany and Italy, two countries that rely more on exports to the US.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the agreement a “good deal” and a “huge deal,” even if she later said that tariffs on cars, which have been decreased from 25 to 15 percent, were “the best we could get.”
Several EU countries acknowledged that the deal establishes some certainty with Europe’s biggest trading partner following months of turmoil, with Sweden, for example, calling it the “least bad alternative” and Spain backing it, albeit “without enthusiasm.”
While French officials agreed that the deal had some benefits, such as exemptions for industries like distilled alcohol and aerospace, they said that the framework is fundamentally unbalanced.
French Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin criticized the EU’s negotiating stance, saying it was too passive in the face of what he described as a power play by Trump.
The US is hurrying to close trade deals with many of its trade partners ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline Trump has repeatedly postponed due to pressure from markets and intense lobbying by industry.
In recent months, the Trump administration secured deals with the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and a preliminary agreement with China.
Thailand and Cambodia Reach Ceasefire to End Border Clashes
THAILAND
Thailand and Cambodia reached an “immediate and unconditional” ceasefire agreement Monday to halt deadly border clashes that escalated last week, and have killed dozens of people over the past decade, France 24 reported.
The agreement came after peace talks held in Malaysia, which also included the US and Chinese officials. The situation remained “calm” on Tuesday following a meeting of military leaders from Thailand and Cambodia, Reuters reported.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that both parties agreed to begin restoring normal relations after what he described as candid talks.
The ceasefire will take effect at midnight on Tuesday, local time. The defense ministers of Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand have been directed to “develop a detailed mechanism” to monitor the ceasefire.
Military and officials from both sides will also hold talks aimed at easing tensions along the disputed border.
The peace negotiations followed direct pressure from US President Donald Trump, who said he called the leaders of both countries and warned them that trade negotiations would be paused until the fighting ended, the Guardian noted.
Thailand and Cambodia face a tariff of 36 percent starting Aug.1 unless they can secure a deal.
The two countries have been clashing intermittently for years over contested territory on their 508-mile shared border, but the conflict escalated at the end of May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a skirmish.
More clashes erupted Thursday after separate landmine explosions earlier in the week injured Thai soldiers patrolling a disputed part of the border.
The countries have traded blame for starting the conflict, which has killed at least 35 people and displaced more than 260,000. Both countries recalled their ambassadors, while Thailand also shut down all border checkpoints with Cambodia.
Syria to Elect New Legislature
SYRIA
Syria announced Monday it will hold parliamentary elections in September, the first to take place under the country’s new leadership, which took power following the ouster of the regime of former President Bashar Assad in December, the Associated Press reported.
Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, chairman of the Higher Committee for People’s Assembly Elections, told state news agency SANA that elections will take place between Sept. 15 and 20.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa will appoint one-third of the 210 seats, while the rest will be filled by elections.
Hassan al-Daghim, also a member of the elections committee, told the Erem News site that an electoral college will be set up in each Syrian province to choose the seats.
Al-Sharaa signed a temporary constitution in March that mandated the creation of a People’s Committee to act as an interim parliament until a permanent constitution is adopted and general elections held, a process that could take several years.
When the plan was first announced, critics warned that it gave too much power to al-Sharaa and did not adequately represent the country’s ethnic and religious diversity, France 24 noted.
The announcement came amid growing discontent over the new government following recent outbreaks of sectarian violence.
The clashes, which have killed hundreds of people, have placed Syria’s delicate postwar transition at serious risk.
DISCOVERIES
When Trees Scream
Scientists at Israel’s Tel Aviv University discovered that plants can “scream” ultrasonic sounds when they are in distress, such as when they experience a drought.
These sounds are out of the range of the human ear, but researchers had believed that they could be heard by other insects or animals.
They were right: In their new paper, the same team found that female moths can hear the plants’ sounds of distress, which influence their decisions whether to lay eggs on them.
“This is the first demonstration ever of an animal responding to sounds produced by a plant,” Yossi Yovel, a neuroecologist and co-author of the study, told the BBC.
For their experiments, Yovel and his colleagues turned to female moths, which lay their eggs on tomato plants to provide a food source for their larvae.
“We assumed the females seek an optimal site to lay their eggs, a healthy plant that can properly nourish the larvae,” explained co-author Lilach Hadany in a statement.
In the first test, the moths had to choose between a box with a speaker playing high-frequency distress sounds from dehydrated tomato plants, and another that was silent. Both boxes had no plants.
The moths flew to the “noisy” box, with scientists suggesting that the choice was based on the fact that there was a living plant nearby – even though it was under stress.
“In the absence of an actual plant, the moths indeed preferred to lay their eggs in proximity to acoustic signals which represent dehydrating plants,” they wrote.
When researchers disabled their hearing organs, the insects showed no preference. This confirms that they were hearing and responding to plant-emitted sounds in the earlier experiment.
Things got interesting in the second experiment, when the insects had to choose between two healthy tomato plants, one of which had a speaker playing the stress sounds of a dehydrated plant.
Unsurprisingly, the moths flew toward the silent plant, suggesting they were picking the healthier choice.
But in the third experiment, the females had to choose between a silent box and another that had male moths emitting ultrasonic signals similar to the plants. The females again weren’t picky about where they laid their eggs. The findings further showed that their behavior is specifically triggered by plant distress sounds, not just any ultrasonic signal.
The study raises intriguing questions about whether other animals also eavesdrop on botanical distress calls and whether plants, in turn, respond to each other.
The authors insist, however, that plants are not sentient: They noted that the distress sounds are generated through physical effects caused by changing local conditions.
Even so, the study hints that plants and animals evolved together the ability to produce and listen to the sounds for their mutual benefit.
“This is a vast, unexplored field,” Hadany told the BBC, an entire world waiting to be discovered.”