Current Affairs | All stories

On Tuesday a letter emerged allegedly sent by pop singer Karel Gott to former Communist chief Gustáv Husák. In the letter, which Gott admits signing, the pop star pleads for more artistic freedom and asks, after staying too long in West Germany, to be able to come home.

After years of seeing their bricks and mortar assets rising in value, Czechs are now coming to terms with falling prices for flats and houses. But while gloom and doom mongers predict that a lot worse is still to come, some analysts can see signs of a recovery.

A row has broken out in the Communist Party over whether or not to apologise for crimes committed by Czechoslovakia’s former Communist regime. Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, the party still largely remains a pariah on the political scene - at least on the national level. An apology would theoretically be one step towards political acceptance.

Archaeologists in south Moravia have begun excavating the site of a Roman hospital which is described as the largest preserved site of its kind north of the Danube. Indeed, it was part of a fortified complex that was the northernmost outpost of the Roman Empire in the region in the second century.

The Czech Interior Ministry on Monday unveiled plans to repatriate another wave of foreigners from non-EU countries who have lost their jobs. The government’s voluntary return scheme, offering laid-off workers cash and a plane ticket home if they agree to leave the country, has been extended to cover another 4,000 people. For the first time, the government is also planning to help those living illegally in the Czech Republic to return home.

All this year Czechs are remembering the fall of communism in November 1989, but just what was it exactly? Was it the “overthrow” of communism? Or simply “the collapse”? That’s a debate that’s still simmering away in Czech society, and on Saturday the country’s president Václav Klaus once again waded into it, telling students in Prague that the role of individuals in 1989 is often overestimated.

Specialists in Brno have presented a new emergency transport system aimed at saving horses that suffer tendon injuries or fractures. In the past, rescuers had to improvise to save injured horses in the Czech Republic, but now a new vehicle modified to make transport easier is going into use. The first such specialised service in central Europe should help save horses which would otherwise have to be put down.

Language teaching in the Czech Republic has been big business since the fall of Communism, with many hoping improving their language skills will increase their job prospects. Now, however, there has been a suggestion that up to 30 percent of the country’s language schools could go to the wall in the not too distant future.

Mushroom and berry-picking are common in the Czech Republic – so much so that they pick several billion crowns worth each year. This week the Agriculture Ministry released figures revealing that in 2008 Czechs picked domestic berries and mushrooms worth 2.7 billion crowns (the equivalent of around 150 million US dollars). While that’s certainly a lot, 2008 was actually a weak year.

The Czech Republic clarified – rather than tightened – its smoking legislation on Friday, when the Senate passed an amendment to the law on smoking in public places. The amendment was very much a compromise between anti-smoking campaigners on one hand, and those trying to protect people’s right to light up in bars and restaurants on the other. But as Rob Cameron reports, a total ban – such as that which exists in many European countries - is still a long way off.