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Czechs are among the world leaders for so-called contactless cash payments. The use of such payments, such as on city trams and buses, is soaring and has sparked arguments about whether the writing is on the wall for traditional notes and coins issued by the country’s central bank.

It’s pretty clear that European agriculture is bracing itself for a further wave of reform which will trim and re-shape the famed Common Agricultural Policy. But early discussions on what form the reforms should take have already highlighted deep divides between Czech farmers themselves and with the agriculture ministry.

The electric car revolution is clearly on the horizon although their sales take off in the Czech Republic has been hesitant so far. Even so, one of the major stakeholders in that transformation, electricity producer ČEZ, is pushing ahead with a programme to have the required infrastructure in place when the brakes on electric car sales finally come off.

Prague is undoubtedly a hub for the use of the alternative cryptocurrency Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is now very much at a crossroads as some of its technological flaws start to catch up. A sort of civil war has developed around its future development with, as the cliché goes, only likely to tell who the victor will be.

The proportion of manufacturing industry in the economy of the Czech Republic is the biggest among all EU countries. And within that, the auto sector is by far and away the most important, accounting for around a third of all industrial production with the figure showing no sign of falling. But the sector is very much at a crossroads with immediate and longer term challenges putting a question mark over continued growth. Zdeněk Petzl is acting director of the Czech Automobile Industry Association. I asked him how the first half of the year appears

Countries form around the world signed up in 2015 to a United Nations plan for sustainable global develop. It was greeted as an unprecedented move towards creating a fairer and more sustainable world. The Czech government was due to give an update on its progress in attaining some of the goals at the UN this week. At the same, the Czech branch of the NGO Social Watch prepared to present its findings about progress or the lack of it locally.

There are a handful of Czechs who are part of the booming hi-tech new economy on the US West coast and more specifically in Silicon Valley. But few could boast a career that over the last decade has been littered with the names of so many of the large multinational US companies in the forefront of technology and its applications as Zlín native David Pavlík. His career has jumped from Microsoft, to Amazon, multinational pay for film company Netflix, and currently the private company at the cutting edge of the new space race, SpaceX.

Diplomats pushing Czech economic interests across the world have been gathering in Prague in recent days to discuss latest developments and initiatives. Such diplomats, not just from the foreign ministry but from industry and trade, agriculture, and research have multiplied in the past years with the number of dossiers and projects six times more than just three years ago. One of those taking part was Aleš Opatný, the head of the economic and commercial section at the Czech embassy in London. The London office was picked out for its success last

What began as Rekola, the NGO, is now an NGO-slash-successful socially-conscious business. If you need to get quickly from A to B in Prague or a number of other Czech cities, pinpointing the nearest Rekola bike through an online app is simple, and the bikes are easy to spot because they are… pink. For a mere 32 crowns for single use, you can zip around the so-called Pink Zone here in the capital. Rekola now has almost 15,000 registered users across the country and is even looking to expand abroad.

It’s probably a surprise to most outsiders that the Czech Republic is a world leader in terms of computer and mobile phone security but that’s undoubtedly the case as Avast wraps up its takeover of rival company AVG.