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Lukáš Valášek wrote that the state-owned company Čepro has paid Agrofert over 19 billion crowns for contracts without a public tender since 2017. According to him, Čepro began to claim that it did not have to hold public tenders after the law prohibiting companies owned by politicians from obtaining public contracts came into effect. Valášek stated that the company has relied on the opinion of the then vice-chairwoman of the Office for Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), who left the office due to suspicions of manipulating decisions in favor of representatives of the ANO party, Jaroslav Faltýnek and Jiří Švachula. According to him, she signed the opinion before her departure. In preparing it, she was supposed to have used documents from the ministries led by Alena Schillerová and Karel Havlíček, which, according to Valášek, downplayed Čepro's exceptional position, even though it is captured in state strategies. According to Valášek, the government of Petr Fiala did not address the matter, and the ministries, now again under the control of Havlíček and Schillerová, do not want to reopen it based on their statements. Čepro also refused to inform him how many contracts it has already awarded to Agrofert under the new government of Andrej Babiš, despite the ÚOHS ruling that the company is subject to the information law at the request of the Pirate Party's analytical team. Valášek added that even the ÚOHS led by Petr Mlsna, whom Babiš appointed, did not see a reason for a review. According to Valášek, the Prime Minister decided whether the government would extend Mlsna's mandate for additional years. https://t.co/O1ekCFdPwn #Česko #politika #korupce (translated)

It's great that they are attacking me, that the prime minister will come to support their candidate, that they created a website about me with paid advertising. Grolich: YES would totally fail in the upcoming parliamentary elections, their marketing didn't know how to handle us. #SenátníVolby #AndrejBabiš #MarketingPolitiky (translated)

Lucie Amálka wrote that the situation they used to laugh at in others has also affected them. She mentioned that she is happy that there will be TT twice a week and that she is looking forward to the weekly summary from J. Gulik on Sunday. She thanked Erik Tabery for the support at Respekt and added that, according to her, they can't do without humor. https://t.co/QvRoPXjtwr #humor #život #panoptikum (translated)

Jari Mäkäräinen criticized an article in Helsingin Sanomat and said he had made corrections to it. According to him, the nonfiction writer Ari Haasio and Mattila had suggested that Finnish identity was ambiguous, compared the mistrust faced by evacuees from Karelia to current fears directed at Muslims, and stated that everyone was a descendant of immigrants. Mäkäräinen wrote that migration was an old phenomenon, but migrations from different times could not be equated. He noted that the first people arrived in what is now Finland about 11,000 years ago and believed that this did not provide a basis for equating the current migration from Afghanistan or Somalia with the arrivals of earlier traders, craftsmen, or industrial founders. He described Finlayson as an actor that built factories in capital-poor Finland, brought technology, and created jobs. Mäkäräinen compared him to a Mohammed coming from Somalia, who he described as illiterate and dependent on Kela support. He believed these examples illustrated different types of migration and claimed that there were differences in education, employment, cultural distance, and criminality. He also claimed that those coming from Afghanistan were overrepresented in rape statistics. Regarding the evacuees from Karelia, Mäkäräinen wrote that they had come from within Finland, spoke Finnish, and shared key features of Finnish culture. He said they had faced mistrust and derogatory name-calling, but believed they differed from current arrivals from Afghanistan, for example, in terms of adaptation, work ethic, and use of social security. Mäkäräinen also denied the comparison made by Haasio and Mattila between 19th-century antisemitism and the Somali discussions of the 1990s. According to him, the groups were not similar, and Jews had mostly integrated well. He argued that current migrations should be evaluated based on their impacts on employment, crime, and social security. Finally, he wrote that the continuity of society required, in his opinion, the adaptation of newcomers. #maahanmuutto #suomalaisuus #kulttuuri (translated)

The government of Singapore has launched a dating app called "FirstDate" to increase the birth rate in the country, which has fallen to a historic low in 2025, by suggesting suitable partners to unmarried civil servants using a specialized algorithm. #Singapur #DatingApp #Geburtenrate (translated)

Magda wrote that after the elections in Krakow, the right announced the results of next year's parliamentary elections. She noted that KO lost there to independent candidate Łukasz Gibała, who has been building his position for years, and considered it a serious warning for the party. She added that if local elections are to predict parliamentary results, it is worth recalling Warsaw, where opponents of Rafał Trzaskowski failed to gather the signatures required for a referendum. Magda summarized that after KO's defeat in Krakow, the right announced its own victory, ignoring reality. #Kraków #wybory #polityka (translated)

Sławek Jastrzębowski accused Domański and Tusk of transferring part of Poland's sovereignty to the European Union without a law or the consent of parliament or the president. He assessed that the decision is essentially irreversible and marks the beginning of the gradual deprivation of Poland's further powers, including the forthcoming ability to legislate. He claimed that Germany and the stock exchange in Frankfurt will be excluded from this integration, and in the end, he used a term suggesting German superiority. #suwerenność #Polska #UniaEuropejska (translated)

This agreement with the murderous dictator is a stain on the face of our nation, an insult to the memory of Lindsey Graham, and directly contradicts the intent of Congress expressed in our bipartisan sanctions law. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, stated on social media that the announced agreement on diesel is in direct opposition to the provisions of that law. #Trump #Putin #Ukrajina (translated)

Jiri Jicha wrote that Andy Burnham confirmed after a briefing with intelligence services the direct involvement of the Kremlin in the Brexit referendum in 2016. According to Jicha, Burnham warned Berlin and Paris that Russia is similarly attempting to influence their countries. He described Brexit as an abuse of the British state by foreign intelligence services and claimed that Britain is still paying for it with industrial collapse, chaos, and rising prices. #Brexit #Rusko #Zpravodajství (translated)

Zdeněk Šarapatka thanked his supporters and stated that their support helped him get back on his feet after the results of the Senate elections. According to him, the campaign in Prague 5 and 13 was not a fair competition about topics, but a contest over billboards. He claimed that one of the candidates was running a concurrent campaign for the Senate and the Prague City Hall, transferring funds between them, including money from a company building houses. According to Šarapatka, the state supervision office did not respond to the violations of the rules. The candidate, he claimed, received 14,606 votes out of a total of 45,782. Šarapatka also criticized the ODS, which, according to him, despite an agreement with his TOP 09, fielded its own candidate, thereby reducing the chances of defeating Václav Láska. He stated that their candidate hardly presented political positions during public appearances and instead relied on a romanticized story about the students' relationship with the school principal. He added that the students of the candidate's school, according to Šarapatka, got involved in the campaign, even though the principal was balancing on the edge of the education law. The candidate received 12,162 votes out of 45,782. As an earlier example of the split with ODS, Šarapatka mentioned its member Benda, who, according to him, appointed Matocha and Xaver Veselý to the Czech Television Council. He claimed that part of ODS contributed to his failure in the election despite the party agreements at that time. He also recalled that six years ago, at ODS's request, he supported its candidate in the second round of the Senate elections in Mělník, whom he claimed he had not seen publicly appear in the Senate since then. Šarapatka stated that he would not make the same mistake again. According to him, the result meant that there would be no amendment to the lustration law nor security clearances for government members and their deputies, and that there would be no qualified fight for a free Czech Radio and Czech Television. At the same time, he urged his supporters to keep going. #politika #volby #Senát (translated)

Meinel also considers the scenario of the "parent house," which would have to be sold due to an apparently overwhelming tax burden, to be unrealistic: If it continues to be inhabited by children or surviving spouses, no inheritance taxes would apply under current law. #Erbschaftsteuer #Bundesverfassungsgericht #Unternehmenserben (translated)

Lord Vinheteiro compared Lula's choice for the Presidency, which he attributed to social agendas, to expectations in a relationship: according to him, a person would seek a businessman who would support the couple and offer an iPhone, international trips, and a luxury car, but would not want to camp with someone who invades land. #Lula #pautassociais #relacionamento (translated)

A 29-year-old dolphin named Rocky has died after his relocation from the closed amusement park Marineland France to the Selwo Marina Zoo in Spain, after environmental organizations warned of the health risks of this relocation and attempted to legally prevent it. #Delfin #Tierschutz #Umweltschutz (translated)

"We don't want windmills. (...) Show me a country with green energy, and I will show you a bankrupt country. You know, Germany tried it. They were about two days away from extinction." President Donald Trump claimed at a campaign event that the energy transition had brought Germany to the brink of disaster. "I will impose a 250 percent tariff on your damn wine and all the crap you send us. I will impose a 250 percent tariff on your wine, your champagne, and everything you send us, Emmanuel." At the same time, he threatened him, according to his own account in a phone call, with additional tariffs of 250 percent if French pharmaceutical companies did not offer their medications in the United States at lower prices. "I call him Muhammad. Someone said his name is not Muhammad, but Abdul. (...) I am the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want. To me, he is Muhammad. And he is a radical jihadist." Furthermore, Trump made derogatory remarks about the Muslim politician Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the Senate for the Democrats. #Trump #Russland #Energiepolitik (translated)