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The Architect of the Year award has been bestowed upon a renowned educator and architect, Petr Hájek, who the judges said has responded with experimental flair on a wide range of challenging projects. A professor at the faculties of architecture at Czech Technical University in Prague and at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, he was honoured on Tuesday evening for his exceptional contribution to the field over the past five years.

On Monday, the minister of labour and social affairs called for a wide-ranging interdepartmental effort to sort out the issue of rogue landlords preying on families living in socially excluded localities. A list of 15 specific measures will act as a common thread in the preparation of a series of government proposals aimed at limiting the poverty trade business.

The outbreak of a dangerous African bird disease is killing blackbirds and other bird species in the Czech Republic. The mosquito-carried Usutu virus has spread to Europe from tropical and subtropical Africa and has been raising the bird toll across the continent. I spoke to Petr Voříšek of the Czech Society for Ornithology and I first asked him to tell me more about the disease.

The Czech Republic’s trade unions in health care are set to hold talks with the health minister this week. They have rejected his offer of a five-percent pay rise and insist on a blanket salary increase of 10 percent. If their demands are not met, they are ready to call on doctors and nurses to stop doing over-time.

Scientists from the Czech Technical University in Prague are testing sensors built into bridges that should be able to continually monitor the strain and tension within the construction. If successful, the system could help prevent bridge overloads and other technical problems.

Indian President, Ram Nath Kovind, is meeting with both the Czech President and Prime Minister this Thursday. Representatives of over 50 Indian enterprises are arriving alongside Kovind to take part in a specially organised forum with their Czech counterparts, focused on deepening trade and business ties. Collaboration in research and development is also to be discussed.

An exhibition of work by the major Czech modernist painter František Kupka has just got underway at the National Gallery in Prague. Entitled František Kupka 1871–1957, it is the first retrospective of the artist’s work since the 1989 exhibition in Paris and covers his entire career, from symbolism to abstraction.

Dozens of experts from all over the world gathered at a conference today, which opened up this year’s edition of Future Port Prague. The two day show, taking place in the Prague Market, will also feature a machine ethics symposium and a festival, showing many of the latest technological inventions to the public.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, the town of Kostelec nad Orlicí took up a public collection to erect a new statue of the country’s founder and first president, Tomáš Garrique Masaryk. But it won’t be a faithful replica of the original – removed by the Nazis and later melted down by the Communists.

Whether it was in the show trials of the 1950s or reporting from the Middle East, an undercurrent of anti-Semitism was present in the communist propaganda apparatus in Czechoslovakia. At least that is what a new website aimed at teachers in secondary schools and just released by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes reveals.