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The Czech Supreme Court cancelled on Wednesday a 37-year-old verdict of a communist court which sent four young writers to jail for defamation of the Soviet Union and public disturbance. The four men, who spent up to a year in prison, got into trouble in the summer of 1973 in a Prague pub – when they sang an old song with slightly innovated lyrics.

A report by the Czech Helsinki Committee, a respected human rights NGO, on Monday again highlighted the sorry state of Czech prisons. Their overcrowding continues to rise, which in turn deteriorates the living conditions for the inmates. The authorities believe – as they did a decade ago – that alternative punishment would help. But the system of alternative punishments has been inefficient and now supplies more convicts to the country’s prison houses.

Duke Special is a songwriter and performer from Belfast whose style is influenced by vaudeville and theater. Having opened for the likes of Van Morrison and Snow Patrol, he is known for putting on a captivating live performance – often using unusual instruments such as old gramophones or transistor radios. Duke Special’s four-concert tour of the Czech Republic kicks off Tuesday night at Prague’s Malostranská Beseda. We caught up with him ahead of his show, the second time he will be performing here, and started out by asking if he had any special

On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Treaty was officially dissolved and 36 years of Czechoslovakia’s military alliance with the USSR came to an end. As a consequence, Soviet troops stationed in the country during the 1968 invasion were gradually withdrawn – an anniversary that the Czech NGO Opona is celebrating with a series of events entitled Week of Freedom, starting Monday. Sarah Borufka spoke to David Gaydečka, one of the organizers of Freedom Week about the events planned.

Politicians and union leaders are still arguing about the significance and the impact of Thursday’s transportation strike. But in Prague, where nearly all municipal transport came to a standstill, the strike had one unexpected effect – many more people than usual got on their bikes and rode to work. Pro-cycling activists now hope that this could be a defining moment, with Thursday’s necessity eventually becoming the city’s everyday virtue.

While Czechs in the big cities struggled to get to work on Thursday, union leaders gathered some 1000 demonstrators in the center of Prague. Sympathizers with the trade union cause joined them in a protest march through the town.

After months of negotiations between the government and trade unions, and countless demonstrations against government reform measures, the long-feared nationwide transport strike has arrived. On Wednesday representatives on both sides continued to seek a last-minute agreement that might save the country from what is a very infrequent occurrence here – the closure of the rail, bus and municipal transit services. Despite the looming threat, both the government and the unions appeared almost unwilling to budge even hours before the strike began. Christian

It’s always a long time coming, but the Prague Quadrennial is here again. The world’s largest “performance design” event will be taking place all around the Czech capital for the next eleven days, from the streets to the exhibition palaces, covering all kinds of modern dramatic and visual arts and hosting performers from all over the world.

The Czech Constitutional Court on Tuesday issued a groundbreaking verdict that grants the country’s towns and cities the authority to decide if and where VLTS, video lottery terminals, are placed in their municipality. Until recently, the Finance Ministry had the final say-so in the matter. Michael Canov, the mayor of Chrastava, the city that went to court over the ministry’s gaming directive and brought about the landmark ruling, speaks on the issue.

More than 200 masterpieces of Czech avant-garde and modern art fetched record prices at a Sotheby’s auction in London on Monday. František Kupka’s early abstract Movement, created between 1913 and 1919, sold for 1.3 million pounds, the highest sum ever paid for a Czech artwork. Monday’s auction brought 11.1 million pounds, more than double then Sotheby’s estimated. Other significant works sold at the auction included Josef Čapek’s Sailor and Phantomas and Sculptress in the Studio by Emil Filla. Jan Richter spoke about the action with Czech Radio’s reporter