Czech foreign minister fired in government reshuffle

PRAGUE (AP) — Czech Republic’s foreign minister has been fired in a government reshuffle less than half a year before the parliamentary election. Monday’s move comes after Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek failed to beat Interior Minister Jan Hamacek in a vote to become the new leader of the Social Democrats at their party congress last week. The leftist Social Democrats are a junior party in the coalition government dominated by Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s centrist ANO, or YES, movement. Petricek was the second minister to lose his job in a week who opposed vaccination by Russia’s Sputnik V shot, which isn’t approved.