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Twenty-five years ago, the West German Embassy in a normally quiet part of Prague’s Malá Strana became a refuge for hundreds of East Germans, desperately trying to escape from communism. On September 30 1989, they got the news they were hoping for, when West Germany’s foreign minister stood before them and announced they were free to emigrate to the West.

Czech President Miloš Zeman has come under criticism for denouncing sanctions against Russia – in Russian – at an event organised by a close associate of Vladimir Putin’s. Mr. Zeman described the conflict in Ukraine as a civil war and said the situation was a mere “flu” compared to the threat of Islamic terrorism.

The Czech Chamber of Deputies has recently been embroiled in a controversy over one deputy calling another a “communist fízl”, a scornful term for policemen and their informers. The heated debate over whether the MP should apologize has produced no conclusion. However, it does illustrate the difficulties of addressing the nation’s communist past.

The news website iHned.cz will next week become a pioneer of paid content on the Czech internet. The site, affiliated with the business daily Hospodářské noviny, will put up a paywall on Monday restricting free access to 10 stories a month. But will it manage to find subscribers on a market where users are used to free news?

Around half a million Czechs are currently unemployed and with roughly 50 000 vacancies, it is clear that only one in ten applicants will succeed in finding a new job. The situation is all the more difficult for people over fifty, who often look for a job in vain before reaching retirement age. According to Nikola Šimandlová of the NGO Alternativa 50+, which has just launched a new project against ageism, discriminating people on the basis of age is becoming increasingly common:

Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the most distinctive Czech cultural figures of the last century. Perhaps best-known in his native country as a poet, Jiří Kolář is also renowned both home and abroad as a creator of often playful collages – and “crumplages”, works that began with him scrunching up paper. I spoke to Richard Drury, chief curator of the Gallery of Central Bohemia, and asked him where he would place Kolář in context of Czech visual art in the 20th century.

The Czech Republic’s national carrier Czech Airlines has announced layoffs in an effort to keep the troubled company afloat. The airline will let go around one third of its staff including dozens of pilots and stewards and ground personnel. The move has spurred concerns over the future of the carrier which some say could never recover.

A court ruling upholding a Slovak national’s right to vote in October’s municipal elections has unexpectedly opened the way for around 110,000 EU nationals with temporary residence in the Czech Republic to go to the polls. The State Electoral Office announced on Monday that additional ballots were being printed to allow all EU nationals to take part in local elections regardless of their residence status.

A record number of women are running in this years’ local elections in the Czech Republic. According to figures released by Forum 50 %, which promotes the equal representation of women in politics, the proportion of women running in local elections has doubled over the past twenty years. However, despite the positive trend, the Czech Senate still remains largely male-dominated territory. I spoke to Jana Smiggels-Kavková of Forum 50% about the outcome of their survey:

The chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces Petr Pavel is to be the new head of NATO’s Military Committee. His election to the post at a committee meeting in Vilnius over the weekend has been hailed as a "major diplomatic success" for the Czech Republic and an expression of trust by fellow NATO members.