Current Affairs | All stories

Reports of the sterilization of Romany women stretch back to the 1970s. Experts suspect that there could be up to 2000 women in the Czech Republic, who have been sterilized against their will. Since 1991 at least 85 women and one man have lodged complaints with the Czech ombudsman, claiming to have been sterilized involuntarily. The Vybor pro lidska prava a biomedecinu (the Commission for biomedicine and human rights), a government advisory committee, this week suggested that the state should create a fund to compensate these women. The suggested

The outdoor Summer Shakespeare Festival at Prague Castle has been a great success in recent years. However, it is not the only such seasonal theatrical experience available to audiences in the city; Prague's Vysehrad, one of the most important locations in the history of the Czech nation, has recently being playing host to its own summer theatre project called Faust in Gorlice. Dita Salavova has more.

The Czech Under-20 football team are preparing for what could be one of the nights of their lives; if they overcome Austria, they will be in the final of the Under-20 World Cup in Canada, something few could have predicted before it began. Already the youngsters have gone further in the competition than any previous Czech team. What's more, the junior World Cup is a great shop window, and several of the Czech youngsters have reportedly been attracting the interest of European clubs.

Czechs planning to travel around Europe next year will have one thing less to worry about - they will be able to leave their passports at home. The long awaited accession to the Schengen Agreement, which guarantees the citizens of all member countries unrestricted travel, will happen in the first moments of New Year's Day 2008.

As this programme was being recorded the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor held in Libya were still waiting to hear whether their death sentences would be commuted. However among the feverish speculation that a compromise has been reached, reports have emerged that four European countries - including the Czech Republic - were playing a leading role in facilitating the deal.

Over a hundred students from medical schools all over the world are in the Czech capital at the moment; they're here to attend Prague Selective, a broad study programme which is now in its tenth year. The course is organised by Dr. Martin Stransky, who himself studied medicine in the US and runs a health care clinic in Prague.

Crocodiles are no longer something you need to go to the zoo to see here in the Czech Republic. Several Czech farmers have started to rear these animals, along with some less tropical, but equally untraditional, species like snails. Rosie Johnston has the story on all these creatures great and small...

A heat wave coming all the way from Africa arrived in the Czech Republic at the weekend, with Prague seeing a new record temperature of 35.8 degrees Celsius on Sunday. But Czechs are now bracing themselves for even hotter weather: forecasters say Monday could be the hottest day ever recorded in this country, with temperatures of up to 39 degrees Celsius expected.

The Council of Europe has raised serious concerns about the use of castration for sex offenders in the Czech Republic, following a visit by the Council's experts to a number of psychiatric facilities. The Council's Committee for the Prevention of Torture has called for greater safeguards to prevent the treatment being wrongly applied.

Close to fifty Czech cultural figures, scientists and musicians on Thursday signed a petition asking President Vaclav Klaus and the chairmen of both houses of Parliament to support their demand for a referendum to be held on whether the Czech Republic should host a US radar base on its territory. Their public appeal has pleased the Social Democrats and Communists, who are also pushing for a referendum, but the Czech government maintains that questions of defense are not a matter to be decided by the public.