Current Affairs | All stories

Czech adventurer Dan Přibáň is well-known as the team leader of a number of expeditions using what was considered the world’s worst car – the Soviet-era Trabant. Where others would opt for all-terrain vehicles to travel some of the toughest areas on Earth, Přibáň and his colleagues chose the plastic Trabant for expeditions across Central Asia, Africa and South America. Last year, they returned from their most gruelling journey yet: Australia and South East Asia. A documentary about their adventure is now set to premiere in Czech cinemas.

Czech Medical Chamber (ČLK) president Milan Kubek has warned that the country’s healthcare system is becoming increasingly reliant on foreign doctors – but that even these are failing to plug a brain drain gap caused by Czech medical practitioners leaving the country.

A Syrian Love Story on Monday was awarded the main prize at the One World festival of human rights documentaries in the Czech Republic. The film, directed by British filmmaker Sean McAllister, tells the story of a family which the regime of Bashar Assad. Once in Paris, they look for a new home but the marriage between the two main protagonists eventually falls apart.

Finance Minister and ANO party leader Andrej Babiš is in hot water over the suspect drawing of EU funds for his Stork’s Nest farm and conference centre. Mr Babiš maintains that that the application for the funds was made by the farm’s previous owner, whom he refuses to name. An extraordinary session of Parliament called by the opposition is now likely to be held on the matter next Wednesday.

The Russian woodpecker was the nickname given to a rapid-fire shortwave signal emitted during the cold war from the Duga radar in what is today’s Ukraine. But was there a connection between Duga and 1986 disaster at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station? That question is explored in a film entitled The Russian Woodpecker currently being screened at the One World festival of human rights documentaries in Prague. I discussed the subject with producer Mike Lerner, a guest of East Doc Platform, which is organised by the Institute of Documentary

President Miloš Zeman addressed the Czech parliament on Friday expressing support for a government-backed proposal to enable the public to petition for nationwide referenda on a variety of issues. MPs from the TOP 09 party, however, staged a walk-out in protest at both the proposed law and the president’s overall conduct.

Hundreds of municipalities across the Czech Republic are partaking in the “Flag for Tibet” event, prominently displaying the Tibetan flag in order to mark the anniversary of the 1959 Chinese invasion of that country. However, Prague City Hall is once again abstaining from such displays.

A proposed new directive banning the sale of junk foods in schools has elicited strong protests from students and headmasters alike. The list of banned foods compiled by the Education Ministry got high praise from nutrition experts, but schools themselves say it is so strict it would leave school cafeterias selling nothing but apples and mineral water.

A number of Czech politicians have expressed support for Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot on trial in Russia for allegedly helping to cause the deaths of two Russian journalists in 2014. Savchenko is currently on hunger strike, and refusing to accept any verdict handed down by what she has described as a “totalitarian regime and a petty tyrant-dictator”.

The Belgian film No Man is an Island opened the One World festival of human rights documentaries in Prague earlier this week. The film maps the fates of two young migrants – one from Ghana, the other from Tunisia – who have been taken in by locals on the Italian island of Lampedusa, which for a long time was at the forefront of the migration crisis in Europe. I discussed the theme of No Man is an Island – and the limbo-like existence of its protagonists – with director Tim De Keersmaecker.