Current Affairs | All stories

The United States and the Czech Republic announced at a NATO summit in Bucharest on Thursday they had reached an agreement on building a missile-defense radar on Czech soil. The announcement came after months of complicated negotiations and vehement opposition from Russia, as well as a number of EU member states who did not like the idea of a bilateral defense deal between Prague and Washington. But the Bucharest summit produced a breakthrough, with NATO leaders agreeing to endorse Washington’s missile defense plans after it promised to explore

It’s being hailed as the biggest NATO summit ever – leaders of the 26 NATO countries are in the Romanian capital Bucharest at the moment for key talks on everything from Macedonia’s membership to the war in Afghanistan. But for the Czech delegation the most important issue on the table is the U.S. plan to build a radar base about 75km southwest of Prague. The NATO summit, it seems, has produced a breakthrough.

The Sokol gymnastics organisation was founded in Prague in 1862 during the Czech National Revival, and is still active today in the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. This Sunday, Sokol Minnesota is celebrating its 125th anniversary at a building in St Paul called the Czech-Slovak Protective Society – it originally served as a kind of insurance agency for Czechs and Slovaks in Minnesota. I called Joe Landsberger, who is organising the anniversary celebrations.

The Tatra car manufacturer in Kopřivnice is planning to renew production of some of its legendary models. The boss and co-owner of Tatra, American Ronald Adams, would like to produce a limited edition of Tatra 603 and the legendary Tatraplán T600. The replicas will look just like the originals, but the engine and the chassis will be entirely new. The first old-new models should leave the factory in about two years’ time.

Thanks to relatively low costs – and liberal legislation – the Czech Republic has in recent years become an increasingly attractive destination for what could be called IVF tourists. Women from around the world are having test tube babies at Czech clinics, such as one in the south Moravian town of Zlín.

Observers are calling it one of the worst incidents of hooliganism by fans in Czech football history, a rampage that marred what should have been a classic contest between Slavia and Sparta, Prague’s most famous football clubs. The match itself ended in a 1:1 draw, changing little the top of the table - but it was vandalism and violence by radical fans, including the tearing out of hundreds of seats at Strahov’s Evžen Rosický Stadium, that captured all of the headlines. Damages have totalled at least half a million crowns.

It’s not everyday you are given a budget of 10 million crowns (624,000 USD) and told to spend it all. But that’s exactly what a group of Czech art experts were ordered to do by the government on Tuesday, in a bid to bring home some of the Czech Republic’s lost art treasures. Christie’s auction house in Amsterdam was putting more than 400 items from the Liechtenstein family’s art collection under the hammer. Many of these items had once hung on the walls of Czech chateaux. And following the sale, that’s where many of them will be finding themselves

Christian Democrat leader Jiří Čunek is back in the Czech Government after he was re-appointed deputy prime minister and regional development minister by President Václav Klaus on Thursday. More than a year after he was accused of corruption, Mr Čunek has withstood resistance to his comeback and reassumed his position.

The government unveiled plans for a revolutionary change in the country’s motorway toll system on Monday, featuring a new Big Brother-style microchip attached to car windshields. The chip is just one of several changes being introduced on the country’s roads but the plan is particularly controversial, and in European terms would be virtually unique.

The Lidice museum, which stands on the site of the Czech village that was infamously razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1942, opened a new education centre on Monday. Among other things, this facility will give visitors and scholars access to a detailed historical archive of material about what is considered to be one of the most notorious Nazi atrocities of the Second World War.