Current Affairs | All stories

Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas on Friday wound up a two-day official visit to Israel, heading the largest Czech delegation ever to visit the Jewish state. The visit came a week before the UN is expected to vote on an independent Palestinian state which was one of the issues Czech and Israeli officials debated in Jerusalem. Radio Prague spoke about the Czech prime minister’s visit with Czech Radio correspondent in Israel Břetislav Tureček.

Czech filmmaking legend Otakar Vávra – who turned 100 earlier – has died in Prague. Over the course of a remarkable career, Mr Vávra – praised by many of the film elite – directed more than 50 films, from early dramas to acclaimed projects in the 1960s like Witches’ Hammer.

Investors, politicians and the public were taken aback on Wednesday by the news that Martin Roman, the 42-year-old general manager of power company ČEZ, was stepping down, also leaving the company’s board of directors. Mr Roman leaves his post after seven years reportedly of his own initiative, and will be taking up a position on the company’s supervisory board. Shares in ČEZ teetered slightly on Thursday with the announcement, and word that the new ČEZ chief would be second in command Daniel Beneš. Meanwhile, analysts have gone into high gear assessing

Czech-born architect Jiří Boudník was working in New York City when it was hit by the 9/11 attacks. During the next six months, he assisted with the clean-up operation at Ground Zero. Now, on the ten-year anniversary of the historic event, Mr. Boudník, who has since returned to the Czech Republic, has published a book in which he shares his personal 9/11 experiences. It is titled Věže, Czech for Towers. We spoke to him at the book’s launch in Prague’s American Center on Wednesday.

The future of the Czech Republic’s largest public tender is uncertain after the Finance Ministry revealed that three firms had bid between 57 and 65 billion crowns to remove environmental damage inherited from the communist regime. Prime Minster Petr Nečas, as well as several other cabinet ministers are increasingly receptive to arguments by the project’s critics who warned the tender might become the country’s “largest single corrupt deal”.

Czech football champions Viktoria Plzeň played in their first-ever Champions League group stage match on Tuesday, facing off against Belarus’s BATE Borisov. Buoyed by a goal from Marek Bakoš late in the first half, the club showed plenty of spark, but the more experienced Belorussian team came back, leading to a 1:1 draw.

As the Czech government debates a controversial eco-tender on the clean-up of environmental pollution caused under the communist regime, the daily Právo has published a surprising story. Over 100 barrels of the toxic substance beryllium are reportedly being loaded on trucks in Kiev, Ukraine to be transported to a secret destination in the Czech Republic.

A novel titled “Secret Book” has been flying off the shelves in Czech bookstores. In it, author Irena Obermannová describes her secret affair with a figure that she refers to as “the greatest Czech.” The author is known for her very open, often autobiographical style of writing – and since the book’s male protagonist shares many traits with former president Václav Havel, there is heated speculation over the veracity of her account. Culture and society journalist Jana Ciglerová talks about the juicy bestseller.

An anti-Romany march organized by a far-right party escalated when radicals were joined by locals in an attempted attack on a Romany housing unit in a small town in North Bohemia on Saturday. The event was only the latest in a series of racially-motivated incidents that have occurred in the region in recent weeks, where racial tensions between the Czech and Romany communities have been acerbated by high unemployment and a rise in crime.

A shocking new AIDS campaign comparing risky behavior to suicide aims to remind Czechs that the danger of HIV infection has not gone away. The NGO Art for Life, which is behind the campaign, says that the public, which has long grown careless of the danger, needs to be jolted into awareness of what is at stake.