In Focus | All stories

A group of independent filmmakers and animators, headed by producer Mirek Veselý, is nearing completing of a series of animated shorts entitled Old Prague Legends. As the name suggests, the series focuses on some of the city’s oldest tales, either famous or almost forgotten.

A recent dramatic police raid of two Islamic centres in Prague has put the spotlight on the country’s Muslim community. Community leaders have denounced the operation as excessive but the police have charged one man over the distribution of an allegedly xenophobic book. So why did Czech Muslims publish a book by a radical Wahabi author? In this edition of In Focus, we discuss the situation of the Czech Muslim community with Bronislav Ostřanský from the Czech Academy of Sciences. I first asked him about the book, The Fundamentals of Tawheed by Bilal

Babak Mahdian is an award-winning scientist and businessman who heads ImageMetry – a company which developed cutting-edge software called Verifeyed for use by insurers, law-enforcement agencies, and other clients to verify the authenticity of digital images and uncover digital fraud. In an age when any image on the internet can be manipulated within minutes or seconds, knowledge of the source – its digital fingerprint – as well as the sure-fire ability to uncover tampering is more important than ever.

The run-down Praha-Bubny train station is now a fairly insignificant stop on commuter train routes going to and from destinations west of Prague. But in the early 1940’s, this was the setting for one of the darkest and cruelest chapters in Czech history. Now there are plans to create a memorial to victims of the Holocaust right in this station.

Over the past two decades, philanthropy has become an important part of Czech society, with many people being increasing generous in giving to charity. Radio Prague looks at how the gloomy economic climate affected Czech philanthropy in the past year, and how the donor culture has developed.

The Czech Republic boasts hundreds of castles, chateaux, and summer palaces visited by countless visitors each year. It is, in short, one of the biggest attractions. The new season began on April 1 (individual sites may vary) and in this week’s In Focus, I talk with The National Heritage Institute’s Simona Juračková about upcoming exhibitions and events not to be missed.

We return to the case of Russian citizen Tatiana Paraskevich who was detained for 22 months in the Czech Republic on what human rights organisations say are trumped up accusations dreamed up by Kazakhstan’s absolutist president. The good news is that the proceedings now appear to be nearing an end and she has been released from custody. But the case has thrown up questions about the possible abuse of international police cooperation agency Interpol and the role of Czech authorities.

Tens of billions of euros flow through the European Union’s institutional banks, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to projects dotted all over the globe. In many cases, these banking giants are shadowy institutions with little national or public supervision of their decisions and a pretty wide remit for their action. We speak to one of the heads of a Prague-based organization dedicated to making the banks take greater account of what they are pay rolling and what the consequences will

For most of the Czech Republic’s 10-year membership of the European Union, the single currency euro has been regarded with at best reserve and at worst the sort of suspicion you would set aside for your biggest enemy. With a new president and the new centre-left government of Bohuslav Sobotka, the attitude has switched again and now might be characterized as cautiously positive. But the debate is still continuing with the example of neighbour and euro-zone country Slovakia often taking central stage.

The Czech Olympic team won eight medals at the Sochi Winter Games, more than ever before. The games were a dream come true for Czech biathletes who took five of the eight medals. Much of the credit went to the biathletes’ chief coach Ondřej Rybář whose approach and training methods bore fruit at the games. So what are the ingredients of the biathletes’ brilliant success? Jan Richter investigates in this edition of In Focus.