Current Affairs | All stories

The elections which start here in the Czech Republic are historic - for the first time ever, Czechs living abroad have a chance to vote. However, the number of voters who registered at Czech embassies and consulates has fallen short of expectations - according to unofficial estimates there are about 70,000 Czech citizens living abroad but only around 2000 of them registered themselves as voters. The first to cast their ballots will be Czechs in the United States where the elections take place a day earlier to ensure the results would not

There are now only two days to go until the general elections, and the campaigning which has been going on throughout the Czech Republic for many months is now reaching a climax. Hands have been shaken, leaflets have been given out and the hundreds and hundreds of candidates taking part will now be looking forward to the end of a long campaign. Ian Willoughby spoke to one candidate, Eva Novakova, who is standing for the Social Democrats in the Prague region. Before asking Mrs Novakova how she saw her party's chances of forming the next government,

As a NATO member, the Czech Republic needs balanced armed forces which would both fulfil the needs of the country itself and meet the requirements of the Alliance concerning its quality, inter-operability and deployment.

You'd have to be living on the moon not to know that the whole world has gone football crazy over the World Cup, which is currently taking place in Japan and South Korea. Unfortunately, the Czechs didn't qualify so there is perhaps less World Cup fever here than you'd find in countries which are taking part. Nevertheless, Czech TV has been showing every single game, people have been calling in sick, restaurants and pubs with TV sets are full and the bookies are laughing all the way to the bank. Surprisingly perhaps, some people have actually come here to Prague on holiday to catch the greatest event in world sport. And the place you'll find them - and scores of local expats - enjoying the game at 8:30 in the morning is at one of the city's numerous Irish bars. This morning Dita Asiedu went along to one Irish pub, Rocky o' Reilly's, to soak up a bit of the World Cup atmosphere.

Jean Metenier has spent more than a decade working for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), helping children in impoverished, war-torn countries such as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After 12 years in the field, Jean has recently returned to Europe. He's been appointed as UNICEF's new Planning Officer responsible for several European countries, including the Czech Republic. Radio Prague's Rob Cameron caught up with Jean during his recent visit to Prague, and he began by asking him to explain a little more about UNICEF's

From May until December this year, the Czech Republic will be showcasing Czech culture at a festival called Bohemia Magica in France. The festival includes a long series of cultural events promoting Czech film, literature, theatre, music and art. In a couple of weeks the French public was expecting to see an exhibition of a priceless collection of art - the Vincenc Kramar Collection, which includes 17 Pablo Picasso paintings. But it seems visitors to the Czech Season in France will be denied a glimpse of the artwork. The owner of the collection,

Well it's just five days to go before the general elections, and the parties are making a final push before the polls open on Friday. Undecided voters will be a key factor this weekend, and the leaders of the four main parties have been doing their utmost to win them over. Sunday discussion programmes on TV have become a traditional part of political life in this country, and so all eyes were on TV Nova yesterday when the leader of the ruling Social Democrats, Vladimir Spidla, entered the ring with the head of the right-of-centre Civic Democrats,

Czech astronomers have made a number of important discoveries recently. Earlier this year they discovered a Nova, which is a star temporarily emitting a great amount of energy and light, and solved a question which was puzzling astronomers around the world, that is whether one very bright object was or was not actually two stars. Several days ago, an unknown asteroid was observed from the Klet observatory in South Bohemia. More from Pavla Horakova.

The brutal reprisals for the assassination 60 years ago of the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia - Reinhardt Heydrich - are well known. Two villages - Lidice and Lezaky - were razed to the ground, their inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps. But almost unknown is the fact that 1,000 Jews from the town of Kolin were rounded up and transported to the camps, never to be seen again. A handful were spared that "special" transport, among them the writer Hana Greenfield, who was later sent to Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.

Dangerous children's infectious diseases have been eradicated, but they are replaced by fractures, poisoning, burns and fatal injuries. Experience shows, however, that the number of serious injuries can be reduced if children are taught how to avoid them. And this was the main objective of the National Week of Child Injury Prevention, that ended in Prague on Friday. Alena Skodova has the details: