Current Affairs | All stories

The year 2009 was an eventful time for President Václav Klaus. He chaired several EU summits during the country’s presidency of the bloc, and he was the last man standing against the EU’s Lisbon treaty. On Monday, Václav Klaus launched a new book entitled Year Seven, reflecting his views of the events of that year.

The Czech Republic and neighbouring Austria share centuries of common history but in recent times relations between the two states have often been strained. How the countries have developed since 1989 is the focus of a new anthology by a group of Austrian and Czech academics.

There were a few bright moments at Vancouver 2010 when the Czech hockey team was firing on all cylinders but ultimately the Czechs’ run at the Olympics was short-lived, notably the fourth time in a row in a major tournament that they have exited in the quarterfinals. Now some are suggesting that the Czech team is on the verge of crisis, facing lean years in which medal wins will be few.

Eleven years ago, the Czech Union for Nature Conservation started opening rescue centers for injured wild animals all over the Czech Republic. To date, 26 centers have been opened and last year alone over 10,000 animals were brought to a rescue center. The organization’s member Markéta Pecková talks about issues in rescuing wild animals and how the situation is changing.

This week, Prague is hosting the fourth international Mene Tekel festival which highlights the crimes of communism and presents the testimonies of those persecuted by totalitarian regimes. On Thursday, the festival is screening a short Albanian documentary called Prison Nation, which describes one of Europe’s most vicious communist regimes. Radio Prague met with Tomor Aliko, a former Albanian political prisoner, whose powerful testimony is featured in the film.

Wednesday was the most dramatic day yet for the Czech Republic at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Speed skater Martina Sáblíková made history when she became the first Czech to win two gold medals at one Winter Games, while there was also sensational news in cross country skiing with the men’s relay team taking bronze. However, there was also huge disappointment for Czech fans, when the country’s ice hockey team were knocked out in the quarter-finals.

Built at the end of the 1980s to host communist party gatherings, Prague’s Congress Centre was the pride of the communist leadership. However, within years of building it, the communists lost power and the centre never became fully functional. In 2000 it hosted a summit of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but soon ran into debt and now finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

The Czech hockey team survived a scare against Latvia in their first elimination match-up at the Olympics on Tuesday. After three periods the game went down the wire and overtime was needed to break the 2:2 tie. In the end, the Czechs advanced to the next round but the game could have easily gone either way.

Nearly 10 percent of all agricultural land in the Czech Republic is now given over to organic farming, according to new data from the Ministry of Agriculture. The number of organic farms in the country at the end of 2009 was just under 2,700, an increase of 50 percent on the previous year that is due at least in part to government subsidies. I discussed the growth in the sector with Vojtěch Kotecký of the Czech branch of Friends of the Earth.

Public transport around the Czech Republic will grind to a halt in the early hours of Monday as the country’s trade unions go on strike. They will protest against higher taxation of employee benefits, introduced by the government at the beginning of this year. The strike is expected to affect all means of public transport and disrupt life around the country.