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There is no doubt that the gaming or gambling industry is worth tens of billions of crowns in the Czech Republic. New moves from the government seek to curb it and put it under better control. But many gambling companies say stricter regulations will just speed up the movement of most of the business online.

Designer Anna Marešová first made headlines several years ago when her whoop.de.doo sex toys won the main National Student Design Award. Since, she has gone professional. Just recently she oversaw a crowdfunding campaign which raised almost 40,000 US dollars for the product line.

The mushrooming of office blocks and industrial parks and warehouses around the Czech Republic, but especially in the Prague region is one of the most visible signs of economic transformation over the last 20 years. And one of the closest witnesses of those changes has been Robert McLean, the editor-in-chief of Central and East European Construction and Investment Journal, a publication he helped set up in the mid 1990s. Mr. McLean says the commercial real estate market has clearly bounced back from its recent crisis and appears to be building on

It is perhaps a sign of the times last week that the Czech Republic’s biggest electricity company ČEZ, better known for its ownership of massive power plants, made news with the first investment by its relatively new and little heard of venture capital arm. The investment was in a German company which is at the cutting edge of making what could be the future model of the power market work: where consumers produce some of their power themselves and combine it with that purchased from convert. We spoke to the head of ČEZ’s venture capital fund. Petr

On many issues a compromise can be found, but on a proposed new amendment aimed at curbing retailers’ possibilities to abuse their dominant position on the market against suppliers there appears to be no meeting of minds. Retailers want the proposed changes scrapped and warn of the likelihood of higher prices and foreign retailers quitting the country if this does not happen. The Czech competition office says the new rules are a vital part of its toolbox to counter the abusive behavior of the big retail chains.

Public television and radio broadcasters have seen their traditional dominance in delivering news and entertainment crumble in the new multimedia, multi-platform environment. And the challenge is not just coming from local commercial rivals but also big global players entering the media arena. Public broadcasters from across Europe got together last week in Prague to take stock of where they are on the market and where they should be going.

The behavior of Russian power giants Gazprom and Rosatom has been the subject of an in-depth Czech report which has produced some mixed findings about the state of energy security in the region. The results fed into a multinational conference about what risks the state-owned Russian companies posed on the power market.

Central European rail cargo companies have traditionally grabbed a much bigger share of the market for shipping goods than their Western European peers. But competition across the region is stepping up and a long expected consolidation has just occurred with Polish rail freight company PKP Cargo just buying out the second biggest Czech rail cargo company, AWT.

Czech company Seznam is a global rarity in being one of a handful of Internet search engines which have fended off US giant Google on their local turf. The website, tv streaming and classifieds company has evolved around the core search engine. It is increasingly developing its media activities and putting more video content on both TV and computer screens.

While the main spotlight in the Czech Republic is on financing new nuclear reactors, the question of covering the costs of dismantling the old ones once their operation lifetime is over is also looming large. And according to some experts and international comparisons, the Czech Republic could be looking a bit underfunded when the final bills for decommissioning reactors and dealing with highly radioactive waste start to be presented.