Current Affairs | All stories

The legendary Czech hockey goalie Dominik Hašek has announced his retirement. A year and a half since his last match, played in Russia, the 47-year-old Olympic champion and two-time Stanley Cup winner had been hoping for yet another stint in the NHL. But on Tuesday, Dominik Hašek said that since no offer had come from overseas, it was best to call time on his career. RP spoke to the star goalie Dominik Hašek, soon after he announced his decision.

Anti-corruption police on Monday arrested one of the country’s best-known lobbyists, Marek Dalík, often referred to as an ‘eminence grise’ during Mirek Topolánek’s government. The former aide and personal friend of the former prime minister was charged with attempted fraud related to the controversial government purchase of Austrian-made personnel carriers. If found guilty, Mr Dalík, suspected of having asked for an 18-million euro bribe, could be sentenced to 10 years in jail.

The state-run power company ČEZ has excluded France’s Areva from a multi-billion dollar contract for the completion of the Temelín nuclear power plant, leaving just two contenders - Russian and US firms - in the running for the country’s biggest-ever energy deal. The news has left analysts speculating on the political and economic implications of this development.

Planes bound for Prague will no longer be landing at Ruzyně Airport; at midday Friday the airport was officially renamed Letiště Václava Havla Praha, or Václav Havel Airport Prague at a lavish ceremony in Terminal 2. Some 80,000 people signed a petition organised by the film producer Fero Fenič to rename the airport to honour the late former president, who died in December.

Last month students from Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences sank their gloved hands into piles of Czech garbage – specifically from the town of Jihlava and surrounding areas. The work was part of a project mapping household waste, including food items. I spoke to Professor Felicistas Schneider, who led her students in the study and found out for example that some Czechs triple-wrap food waste in thin baggies. But she began first by discussing the main aim of the project in connection with raising awareness and reducing food

The Czech government’s anti-corruption drive has claimed another victim close to home: a member of the cabinet. Labour and Social Affairs Minister Jaromír Drábek on Wednesday announced his resignation from office not long after the police charged his first deputy with bribery. While the minister proclaimed his innocence and attempted to salvage his party’s reputation by doing the “honorable thing”, the information being released on the case is highly unsettling.

The Czech NGO Drop-In, which helps drug addicts fighting addiction, has cancelled a facility which had provided methadone for heroin users. The substance acts as a replacement for heroin, gradually reducing dependence. Drop-In had a centre on wheels – a bus – which provided the synthetic opiod for hundreds of users each day near Prague’s main station. But the project, only a month old, was opposed by Czech Railways as well as holders of the station’s lease.

A new study by the Prague-based NGO proFem looks at the costs of domestic violence to the state budget. The authors of the survey took into account the costs of health care for victims of domestic violence as well as the expenses of the judiciary, law enforcement and social welfare systems, and found that domestic violence each year costs the state over 1.3 billion crowns. RP discussed the details with one of the authors of the study, sociologist Kamil Kunc.

A fresh corruption scandal has hit the Czech coalition government less than a fortnight ahead of October’s regional and senate elections and this time the police struck higher than ever before in the echelons of executive power. On Monday plainclothes officers detained Deputy Labour and Social Affairs Minister Vladimír Šiška and the ministry’s IT section head Milan Hojer. Both were later charged with bribery. The news has sent shockwaves through the ruling TOP 09 party which on Tuesday met to debate the crisis.

In January 2013, Czechs will for the first time in history elect their president. Polling stations will open on January 11 for the first round of voting, the second round will take place two weeks later, the speaker of the Czech Senate has announced. Twenty-five people have so far expressed interest in running for the office of the Czech president, but only six of them have to date met the legal requirements to become Václav Klaus’s successor.