Current Affairs | All stories

The new league season in Czech football gets underway after the summer break this weekend. And the very first game of 2010-2011 could well take place in front of half-empty stands on Friday evening. Bohemians 1905 are hosting Slavia Prague, but both clubs’ fans are organizing a boycott of the game to protest the fact that they are now sharing the modern Eden stadium. It was built for Slavia, but it is now also Bohemians’ home ground, after they were forced to leave their traditional stadium about a kilometer away.

One business that is booming in these difficult times is the services offered by debt resolution companies to people who find themselves with financial problems. But the charity People in Need sounded an alarm about such companies on Thursday, saying that the only difference they make is to make the original debts even bigger.

A special commission investigating the causes of the 2008 Studénka rail crash has delivered its long-awaited report, with police investigators speaking of a ‘catalogue of negligence and failure’. Eight people died and 91 were injured when an international express train from Poland slammed into a motorway bridge that had collapsed onto the tracks just seconds earlier.

The world lost one of its leading conductors and a great patron of Czech classical music on Wednesday with the passing of Sir Charles Mackerras, who has died of cancer at the age of 84. In a long career of many highlights, Sir Charles became a notable specialist on the Czech composer Leoš Janáček and played a major role in championing the work of other Czech classical masters, like Bohuslav Martinů and Antonín Dvořák. Christian Falvey looks back at his life.

Children of Stalinism is the title of a series of documentary films about the often harrowing experiences of daughters of political prisoners in 1950s Czechoslovakia. It has just been announced that four of those films will feature in the New York Independent Film Festival, which takes place later this month. To find out more, Radio Prague spoke to the project’s producer, Zuzana Dražilová.

The recently created TOP 09 party has pulled out what appears to be a trump card for upcoming local elections in the capital city, Prague. They have persuaded the highly respected and recently retired governor of the Czech National Bank to enter the ring and run for mayor.

This year’s Bohemia Jazz Fest got underway in Prague on Tuesday night with a concert featuring the great American bass player Stanley Clarke and three other artists. The annual event brings top class jazz musicians to the squares of a number of Czech towns and cities, for free. The man who set it up is New York based Czech musician Rudy Linka; earlier I asked him what was new this year.

The new centre-right coalition government has pledged to implement a series of reforms, reforms that could possibly put its stability to the test. That’s what president Klaus might have had in mind when he asked the new cabinet to “carry out reforms, not a revolution”. Radio Prague spoke to senior political analyst Jiří Pehe and asked him which way he thought we were heading.

The installation of milk vending machines or “milkomats” across the Czech Republic significantly boosted dairy sales last year, and the trend continues. Due to their massive popularity, farmers are now gearing up to expand the range of produce available through vending machines. Other dairy products are already available at some locations, and even vegetables, meat and honey may soon follow.

A new Czech centre-right government made up of the Civic Democrats, TOP 09 and Public Affairs has just been sworn in, after a month and a half of coalition talks. However, having pledged to carry out fundamental reforms and fight corruption, the really hard work starts now for Prime Minister Petr Nečas and his cabinet.