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President Václav Klaus has hit back at critics of his New Year’s Day amnesty, giving public broadcaster Czech Television an exclusive statement in which he accused his political opponents and the media of orchestrating a smear campaign to discredit him towards the end of his second term in office.

On Monday afternoon, a popular theater, television and film actress Jiřina Jirásková passed away in her Prague home at the age 81 after a prolonged illness. Her acting career spans over sixty years and hundreds of roles.

The locally-produced hard drug pervitin remains a serious problem in the fight against drug addiction in the Czech Republic. The drug has a similar effect as cocaine but is cheaper and easier to acquire on the black market. Efforts to curb its production by cutting illegal producers off from one of its essential ingredients pseudoephedrine have run into problems with Czech producers smuggling it large-scale from Poland and Slovakia.

A group of senators across the political spectrum is preparing a legal complaint to the country’s Constitutional Court challenging part of the amnesty declared by outgoing President Václav Klaus. The amnesty has already seen the release of thousands jailed for minor crimes, but is also expected to halt major corruption and embezzlement cases. The legal team behind the complaint says the amnesty tramples on the rights of victims.

Campaigning in the country’s first direct presidential elections has entered its final phase and the nine candidates in the running for the top post have just eight days left in which to convince undecided voters they are the best man –or woman- for the job.

An amnesty declared by President Václav Klaus on New Year’s Day has come under fire from all sides. Most experts agree the president was right in granting amnesty to people sentenced to less than one year in jail, as well as to elderly prisoners serving terms for more serious crimes. But Mr Klaus’s decision to halt prosecution of cases older than eight years, regardless of the nature of the crime, has earned him serious criticism.

The Czech National Film Archive has come out with a new publication entitled Czech Animated Film from 1920 to 1945. The publication follows a six-part series that the archive published last year about Czech feature films. This book, though, looks at a rarely mentioned period in Czech animation. Although most of the famous Czech animated films came after the war, the seeds were planted in the interwar period. The book is also accompanied by a DVD with a rare collection of over 70 films from this period. Radio Prague spoke to Michaela Mertová from

With gloomy economic outlooks and continuing uncertainty on the job market Czechs are bracing for another tough year. In its determination to bring the deficit in public finances to below 3 percent of GDP in 2013 the centre-right Czech government recently pushed through a number of crucial reforms that will impact each and every citizen.

In many ways, Václav Klaus’s last ever New Year’s Day address as Czech president followed the usual script. But it also contained one big surprise – the announcement of an amnesty that will see a quarter of those serving time in Czech jails freed early.

Jana Bobošíková is nothing if not a fighter. As an experienced journalist she grilled seasoned politicians yet in the 2001 Czech TV crisis she sided with management in a battle for control of the airwaves, firing former colleagues who rebelled against attempts to undermine the station’s editorial independence. Although a former MEP, she is a big admirer of President Vaclav Klaus, determined to stand up against Brussels in defense of what she believes to be Czech national interests.