Current Affairs | All stories

In a joint operation with German investigators, police in the Czech Republic arrested six people in one of the single biggest drug bust in Czech history: 14 kilos of pervetin were seized. Two Czechs and four Vietnamese nationals were caught in the operation. On the street, the 14 kilos are valued at more than four million crowns.

Ostrava’s legal battle against the Czech state for failing to adequately protect the environment and citizens’ health is not over. After a Prague municipal court dismissed its complaint last week the town’s mayor has announced he will be filing a cassation complaint against the verdict.

With four days left before a vote for the Czech lower house, the front-running Social Democrats seem to be losing steam, with a slow but steady decline in their voter support. On top of that, an analysis of nine different election polls by the ppm factum agency questions the party’s chances of forming a left-wing coalition after the election, mainly due to a sudden surge by the untested ANO party. Jan Herzmann is the agency’s director, I first asked him why he thought the Social Democrats were losing support.

The government’s human rights commissioner Monika Šimůnková resigned on Thursday, claiming the cabinet had marginalised the position to the point where it was becoming meaningless. Ms Šimůnková has had her critics, even among those whose rights she was appointed to defend. But many have placed the blame squarely at the foot of successive governments which have slowly sought to undermine the post. The Ostrava social worker Kumar Vishwanathan, who works with the local Roma community, sat on the commission from its inception in 1998 and was in close

The Canadian Embassy has confirmed media reports that the government in Ottawa is on the verge of lifting visas for Czechs. Visas for Czechs wishing to visit Canada were reintroduced in 2009 following a rise in the number of Roma people seeking asylum. The Czech government had appealed to the European Union to put pressure on Canada to abolish the visa requirement.

While many European leaders are concerned about healthcare costs related to smoking, the Czech president, Miloš Zeman, opposes curbs on the habit. Indeed, on a visit to the country’s biggest cigarette factory on Wednesday, he made an unlikely recommendation with regard to starting to smoke. But an anti-smoking campaigner says his views have no place in the modern world.

The person most likely to become the Czech Republic’s next finance minister has set off a debate about the country’s foreign policy priorities. Speaking at an economic forum, Jan Mládek of the Social Democrats said criticism of Russia and China could cost thousands of Czech jobs. Critics say human rights have to come before exports.

Restoration work at the famous Palác Lucerna in Prague has taken an unusual turn – combining modern street art with the ancient technique of window decoration. The feature that has attracted attention is a stained glass window that was designed by one of the best known local graffiti artists, Pasta Oner.

The recent presentation of a US award for opponents of Communism to Václav Klaus has sparked a war of words in the Czech Republic. Some believe the former prime minister and president did nothing whatever to fight totalitarianism – and should be stripped of the prize. Now Mr. Klaus has responded with a detailed defence.

Cameron Kerry, the younger brother of the current US Secretary of State John Kerry, visited the Czech Republic with his wife this week. On Monday he went to the small town of Horní Benešov in northern Moravia to look for traces of family history.