Current Affairs | All stories

The historic town of Stará Boleslav, northeast of Prague, may soon become the Czech Republic’s “little Vatican”. The Catholic Church plans to turn the small town, an early Přemyslid stronghold built in the late 9th and 10th century and one of the country’s major pilgrimage sites, into a major cultural and religious centre.

Finance minister Andrej Babiš is facing the begging bowl from government colleagues and other state authorities and has admitted for the first time that the agreed 70 billion state budget deficit target for 2016 might not hold.

Nearly 500 Amnesty International representatives from around the world passed a resolution at the group’s International Council Meeting in Dublin on Tuesday night, advocating the decriminalisation of sex work and prostitution as well as decriminalisation of the purchase of sex. I spoke to the head of the Czech branch of Amnesty International, Mark Martin over the line from Dublin and I first asked him about the reasons that led the human rights watchdog to make the decision:

Is it a sock or a shoe? The most accurate answer is probably a bit of both: new footwear called Skinners, developed by young law school graduate Petr Procházka. The design caught the attention of many fans and is in the middle of a successful crowdfunding campaign. The benefit of wearing the hybrid? Greater overall freedom: each pair rolls up like socks and fits in your pocket, when you want to change to cycling shoes or roller blades.

More than two years after a law legalizing medical marihuana came into force and eight months after it first appeared on the market it remains out of reach for the majority of patients who need it. Finding a doctor authorized to prescribe it and a pharmacy that stocks it is not easy, but the biggest hurdle on the road to obtaining it is its exorbitant price.

Summer holidays when people were able to kick back without once thinking about work are increasingly becoming a thing of the past.

Temperatures around the Czech Republic reached record highs at the weekend with the highest, 39.8 degrees, Celsius registered at two municipalities outside the Czech capital. The sweltering heat has gripped the Czech Republic now for weeks. While welcomed by holiday goers, the drought comes with a cost: a severe drop in water levels, the danger of forest fires and losses in the agriculture sector. Jan Velinger has the details.

The project Plzeň – European City of Culture 2015, which kicked off in grand style in January this year, is now at the halfway point. What have been the most popular events in the West Bohemian city? And how successful has the project been so far? I put these questions to Radovan Auer, the Director of Marketing and Communication of Plzeň 2015:

The DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague is currently hosting an exhibition called TRIAL, inspired by the second trial with the Russian businessman and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which took place between the years 2009 and 2010. It is the first time the exhibition is being shown outside of Russia. I asked Michaela Šilpochová of DOX to tell me more about it:

10:55 on Thursday morning was an important occasion in the history of radio in the Czech Republic as it was the exact moment that full digital broadcasting was launched in the country. The new network, named DAB Praha, carries nine Czech Radio stations, some of which were previously only accessible online. For now the service is just available in the capital and Central Bohemia, but there are plans to roll it out to other parts of the country in the next few years.