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The American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic has taken the highly unusual step of launching an initiative of its own to get a new law governing how massive public contracts are awarded backed by the government and passed by parliament. It says that corruption and the fixing of such tenders have got so bad that many foreign firms have given up on them altogether. We asked journalist and Amcham board member Erik Best what it is seeking to do.

The 12th One World (Jeden Svět) festival of human rights documentaries gets underway in Prague on Wednesday evening. Over eight days it will screen 101 films from 30 states around the world, while around 100 directors and human rights advocates are expected to attend. Every year One World chooses particular issues to highlight; on the eve of the festival, its new director Hana Kulhánková told me about this year’s focus.

Old TV news has been in the news recently here in the Czech Republic. Michael Kocáb, the human rights minister, has slammed the public broadcaster Czech TV for showing daily bulletins from the communist era. It is the same, he says, as if German TV showed Nazi-era news in the 1960s. Sarah Borufka reports.

The National Theatre in Prague is hosting a gala performance in honour of the world-renowned Czech ballet dancer Daria Klimentová, who is celebrating twenty years on stage. Born here in the Czech Republic, she has been a prima ballerina at the prestigious English National Ballet in London for the last thirteen years. On Wednesday night, the National Theatre will be the venue of her 1000th stage appearance. I spoke to the dancer just before her rehearsal for tonight’s event:

Agricultural land is fast disappearing under concrete in the Czech Republic and the pace is getting faster rather than slowing down. That is one of the main reasons why the Ministry of Environment is making a last minute bid to pass a new law that could put a brake on the process. Chris Johnstone reports.

Prague’s Charles University recently hosted an unusual marathon which tested the capacity of various machine translating systems. The annual event is part of the Euromatrix project, which aims to establish machine translation systems for all European languages. The participants had a week to translate some 12,000 sentences from various newspapers and news sites. In the coming weeks their output will be confronted with translations done by professional „human” translators. Ruth Fraňková spoke to Ondřej Bojar from the Institute of Formal and Applied

Transport and services union leader Jaromír Dušek has evoked outrage on the Czech political scene by launching a vicious and homophobic attack on the management of Czech Railways. In an interview for Saturday’s Lidové Noviny, Mr. Dušek said Czech Railways was run by a clique of incompetent gays who had links to homosexuals in the cabinet and the Office of the Government. The controversial trade union leader has now been barred from speaking for the umbrella trade unions organization and is likely to face charges of slander.

The fates of Czech soldiers who died abroad during the first and second world wars are being mapped in a newly created War Graves Record. The internet-based project documents more than 1,800 war graves around the world where Czech soldiers are buried, along with information about how and when they died.

While all eyes were on the awarding of the Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday, the main event in cinema in the Czech Republic came a day earlier with the awarding of the Czech Lions. This year ten Czech films competed in 13 categories. The film Protektor by director Marek Najbrt dominated, winning six awards on the night, including Best Picture.

TOP 09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg and his team have just launched an unusual campaign aimed at getting young Czechs to vote. It revolves around the charismatic politician himself: voters can connect with him via online chats and even win the chance to spend an evening at the pub with Mr. Schwarzenberg. But what role does the leader’s popularity play in the overall success of this new party?