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The Czech charity organisation People in Need working in south-eastern Ethiopia has found a group of roughly six thousand people suffering from hunger and malnourishment. Known for working in remote areas, the organisation was near the Somali border looking into the state of a group of local herdsmen whose cattle had died out and found that they had been joined by several thousand drought refugees from neighbouring Somalia. Local communities have been trying to care for the refugees so far, but their material support - water, food and firewood –

The five-day Prague Pride gay festival kicked off on Wednesday amidst heated political controversy. The country’s top political figures, including President Václav Klaus and Prime Minister Petr Nečas have voiced their opinions on the event. Organizers say the media attention will swell the ranks of participants – both supporters and opponents – of Saturday’s gay parade through the city centre.

Amidst fears of a new wave of global recession, the Czech economic recovery shows signs of slowing down, with industrial output decreasing in June and unemployment on the rise in July. According to data released by the Labor Ministry, the unemployment rate grew slightly to 8.2 percent in July, the first time the figure has swelled since the start of this year. Similarly worrying is a slow-down in industrial output with a growth of only 7.4 percent year-on-year in June as compared to 15.2 percent in May. I spoke to the Raiffeisenbank’s chief economist

The actress and obstinate apologist of the communist regime Jiřina Švorcová died on Monday at the age of 84. Her career in theatre, film and television spanned more than four decades. But most Czechs will remember her as a bizarre figure who never renounced her support of communism, not even after the fall of the totalitarian regime.

With two more days left to go before it begins, the gay and lesbian community’s Prague Pride festival has stirred up considerable controversy. The event, held under the auspices of Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda, has come under fire from public figures such as the head of the ultra-conservative Civic Initiative D.O.S.T. Ladislav Bátora, the controversial presidential aide Petr Hájek, and even the president himself.

Czech police’s organized crime squad has uncovered a case of widespread police corruption, arresting six suspects, four of them from within the ranks of police. One current and three former police officers from Brno’s economic crimes unit are believed to have covered up major cases of economic crime in return for large sums of money for years. An ongoing investigation suggests the network is much larger and its criminal activities may have gone far beyond that.

Sun, sea and pot – that’s how many young Czechs envision their summer break. However the popularity of marihuana among Europe’s biggest consumers is getting many of them into trouble with the Croatian authorities where all drugs are strictly banned.

The former leader of the Czech Social Democrats Jiří Paroubek has announced plans to leave the party and establish a new political group. Should his intentions materialize, he would be the second Social Democrat leader to do so, after Miloš Zeman whose own political project caused significant harm to the Social Democrats in the last general elections. But in Czech politics, problems with former party leaders are not unusual.

A continuing standoff between ecological activists and loggers in the Šumava National Park is continuing to heat up. For more than a fortnight now activists have been chaining themselves to trees slated for felling – stressing that logging commissioned by the park in protected areas is illegal. Under existing regulations, they have argued, trees in the nature reserve must be allowed to decay naturally. The park management has countered by saying that only felling will prevent further locations from being devastated by the bark-beetle. The dispute

The Czech Constitutional Court has just issued a verdict in favor of a mother fighting to prevent her ten-year-old son – a perfectly healthy boy -from being returned to a psychiatric hospital. The boy had already spent six months there during his parents’ custody battle on the basis of a previous court ruling. The court dealt with the case at the instigation of the boy’s father who demanded that the boy be taken from his mother’s care because she was biased against him and was having a bad influence on the child.