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The Czech Ministry of Agriculture has highlighted the plight of Czech egg producers faced with increased imports of cheap foreign imports with the importers accused of sometime breaking the rules.

Filmmakers are expected to pump around CZK 5 billion into the Czech economy this year. A large share of that sum will be spent by the makers of epic historical serials, while stars such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Shia LaBeouf are also slated to shoot here during 2016, the daily Hospodářské noviny reported on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Environment has launched a new programme to deal with drought, which threatens to become a more regular feature in the future. On Tuesday, Environment Minister Richard Brabec promised to earmark 300 million crowns in subsidies to help municipalities find new sources of drinking water in villages and towns across the country.

Despite swallowing up an enormous sum, an ambitious project to create a unified system for collecting taxes and other state contributions has never been anywhere near completion, according to the Supreme Audit Office. Politicians have been blaming one another for the failure.

Struggling mining company OKD will, according to company bosses need a loan of around 700 million crowns to 1.0 billion crowns to ensure its ongoing activities in 2016. Without such help there is a high likelihood that it will have to halt its ongoing operations.

Czech experts say that construction companies’ projects should be subject to compulsory controls so as to prevent structural problems in new buildings. Though mistakes by project architects can endanger lives and entail huge costs, very few firms currently have their designs gone over by independent experts, iHned.cz reported.

A Czech energy company has been given crucial clearance from the Swedish government to take over a massive swathe of coal mines and plants in what was former East Germany. It’s a key step in a deal which looks like propelling Emergetický a Průmyslový Holding (EPH) into the big league of European energy companies and will give it more power generation assets than long time dominant domestic player ČEZ. But Swedish environment groups are saying they will fight on.

The scramble for workers is forcing many Czech companies to hike up the wages and starting packages for new arrivals. But loyal workers might feel they are losing out.

The French company Valeo is planning to open a new centre aimed at developing driverless car technology in Prague this coming December. The move will make the Czech capital one of the leading centres in the world in the growing field of autonomous cars, the newspaper Lidové noviny reported.

Large retail outlets in the Czech Republic will be forced to close their doors on seven state holidays every year after the Chamber of Deputies approved a Senate bill to that end in the face of stiff resistance from the Czech Chamber of Commerce, which says it is discriminatory.