Current Affairs | All stories

The Czech branch of the Chinese company Huawei is suspected of collecting sensitive data on officials and businessmen through its employees. This material is allegedly gathered during business meetings and subsequently entered into a central database to which the company’s headquarters in China have access. Czech Radio’s investigative team at Radiožurnál broke the story, citing former Huawei employees and Czech intelligence sources.

Although many people today crave the latest technology, there is a persistent, strong fascination with “veterans” – old-timey cars, trams and busses which appear on the streets are instantly surrounded by admirers, and the owners of these historic jewels bring them out on special occasions. Ostrava City Transport is now preparing to celebrate the centenary of the oldest trams in its collection – the famed No. 25 tram, a wooden model that hit the rails in 1919, cruising the city at 15 kilometres an hour.

The Žižkov television tower in Prague, once voted the world’s second-ugliest building, will host a virtual space launch this Saturday evening – thanks to an ambitious videomapping project. Filip Liška, who came up with the idea, says the tower is the ideal stand-in for the real Apollo 11 launcher, from which astronauts embarked on the first Moon landing, 50 years ago.

Prague’s leadership has for months been trying to remove an article from an agreement signed between the Czech capital and Beijing during the rule of previous coalition, which refers to the One China concept. Mayor Zdeněk Hřib says the agreement should be apolitical and that including the formulation was a mistake. However, on Wednesday, China asked the Prague government not to interfere in Czech-Chinese relations, accusing the Prague’s mayor and government of having behaved “very badly on issues involving China’s national sovereignty and core interests”.

Prague is hosting a major traditional culture fest this week - the Prague Folklore Days. Around 50 amateur folklore ensembles from Europe, Asia and Africa have gathered in the Czech capital to show off their musical and dancing skills to the public in various parts of the city. The event launched on Thursday and will continue until Saturday evening.

The international volunteer group Food Not Bombs has been providing free food to the homeless and hungry since 1980, and now has branches throughout the Czech Republic. In recent weeks, police and inspectors in an Ostrava district have been preventing volunteers from distributing food on orders from City Hall officials.

The international multi-genre music festival Colours of Ostrava gets underway on Wednesday on the outskirts of the industrial Moravian city. The annual event has expanded exponentially since it launched in 2002 and now boasts 21 stages, and a wide range of discussions under the Meltingpot banner, plus film screenings and workshops. Radio Prague asked festival spokesman Jiří Sedlák about how it has changed and what visitors can look forward to.

The election of Ursula von der Leyen as the new president of the European Commission has elicited both enthusiastic and sceptical reactions from Czech MEP, who were divided in the vote according to party lines. Those in favour of her election highlight her understanding of Central and Eastern Europe, those against point to her weak mandate.

Linguists from countries including China, Japan and France have gathered in Prague to attend the annual Susanna Roth Award, which gives young translators interested in Czech the opportunity to network and learn more about contemporary Czech literature. This year contestants were given the task of translating a selected text from the recent book I Wake Up in Shibuya written by critically acclaimed author Anna Cima.

The Social Democrats’ party leadership on Monday set a final condition for remaining in the minority government of Andrej Babiš – that his ally President Miloš Zeman appoints their nominee for culture minister. But while urging the prime minister to use his constitutional power to ensure the appointment, the party’s ultimatum did not include a deadline.