Current Affairs | All stories

A worldwide grab for land is underway by rich and populous countries like Saudi Arabia and China. In the Czech Republic, agricultural land is also being snapped up. Whereas buyers used to be mainly Dutch and German farmers, now Western investment companies are also getting in on the act.

The American centre in Prague hosted a roundtable discussion on Wednesday on the growing threat of extremism, at a time when far-right groups are holding regular rallies in Czech towns and several Romany families have been attacked by neo-Nazis. The discussion was attended by government ministers, Romani rights activists and also groups that monitor far-right extremism. Klára Kalibová is from the monitoring group Tolerance.

The Lisbon treaty, a reform document which should reshape the working of the European Union, has to date been ratified by all but four countries of the 27-member block – Ireland, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Now the Czech president, Václav Klaus, has said he will not make up his mind on whether to ratify the document until all other EU states have reached a decision.

As we spend more and more of our lives online, we’re exposing ourselves to the more nefarious aspects of the internet – spam, viruses, phishing, extremist websites, even cyber warfare. How to fight such threats is no longer the domain of computer geeks – governments around the world have whole departments to tackle the issue. The problem of cyber terrorism and cyber crime is being discussed this week at the Cyter 2009 conference in Prague, as part of the Czech EU Presidency.

The Czech Republic is famed as one of the most atheistic countries in Europe. But that has not deterred the Czech Republic’s biggest left-wing political party – the Social Democrats - from announcing the creation of a Christian platform. The party says the platform has a long-term goal to forge links with churches, believers and organisations.

A survey of Czech mothers with young children has found that many of them would like to combine childcare with work but cannot. Most are thwarted by a lack of childcare facilities and lack of interest from their former employers in finding ways how they can keep employed. Many just simply face outright discrimination when seeking work.

On Monday, the Civic Democrats announced that they had formed a new ‘anti-federalist’ European Parliament bloc with the British Conservatives and Poland’s Law and Justice Party. Fans of the new European Conservatives and Reformists Group say that it will enhance democracy in Europe, while its detractors call it a motley mix of parties - some with views verging on the extreme. The Czech Civic Democrats are the third biggest party in the grouping, which consists of 55 MEPs from eight different European states. Adéla Kadlecová is the Civic Democrats’ foreign

In a week and a half’s time the red carpet will be rolled out at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. There are no Czech pictures in the main competition this year, though visitors can look forward to a whopping 65 world, international and European premieres. But many will be just as interested in who they can see on that red carpet. So, who are the big stars this year? That’s a question I put to Karel Och of Karlovy Vary’s programming department.

There were sighs of relief on Friday after European Union leaders agreed legal guarantees to Ireland, seen as crucial if Irish ratification of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty is to succeed in a second referendum. But they haven’t counted on Czech President Václav Klaus, who’s so far refused to sign the document despite approval in both chambers of parliament and now says the Irish guarantees amount to new legal arrangements that require separate ratification in the Czech parliament.

Part of a large art collection that once belonged to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler is dispersed in several Czech museums – often without their curators being aware of it. That’s what researcher Jiří Kuchař discovered after three years of investigation. Following last week’s TV report on the case, a gallery in south Bohemia even removed three statues from public display, citing security reasons.