Panorama | All stories

Half-way through the government’s term in office Czechs are so fed up with political infighting and corruption scandals that 80 percent of them now support early elections. For this week’s Panorama I spoke to Jan Hartl head of the STEM polling agency about the mood of the public, what people think of Czech politicians and whether the developments of the past few months have robbed them of any illusions they may have had regarding politics.

It was another cold, grey morning for the thousands of commuters who passed through the city’s crowded metro stations making their way to work on Wednesday morning. But on this particular day the mood in Prague’s busy subway was different. An all-day musical happening put a smile on people’s faces and many stopped to listen, even if it meant missing their regular train connection.

Type design is an ancient art enjoying a renaissance in the computer age. The specificities of writing systems that were once passed down from master to apprentice can now be worked with by designers anywhere in the world who have the patience and the talent to take on a foreign script. One such designer is David Březina, one of the founders of the Brno type foundry Rosetta. In 2008 his Skolar type family received international recognition and he is now working on a font for the Gujarati writing system, used by over 60 million people in the Indian

The increasingly absurd world of Czech politics is proving a huge success at a small Prague theatre house which is drawing the crowds with a political cabaret based on real life politics. Actors reciting verbatim excerpts from wiretappings involving prominent politicians and statements from the scandalous trial against the de-facto leader of one of the ruling parties keep the audience in gales of laughter; a sad testimony of the sorry state of Czech politics.

Last weekend there were reports from around the country of strange lights in the sky, flying about, flaring up, flaring out, chasing each other. It’s true, unidentified flying objects do not just swerve by the Czech Republic on their way to the States, they are here too; and if you thought the Czechs too sceptical to notice, you were as wrong as I was. And last weekend wasn’t the first time.

A few hours of browsing the web changed Lucie Poučova’s life forever. After accidentally coming upon a site reporting on the fate of unwanted racing greyhounds in Ireland she decided to get involved and now runs an animal welfare organization dedicated to re-homing unwanted greyhounds from Ireland and Spain with families in the Czech Republic.

A video spot made by the Association for Integration and Migration highlights the problems of foreign nationals working as domestic service providers – cleaners, maids and nannies. Approximately 27 thousand women from former Soviet bloc countries and Asia are currently employed in menial positions in Czech households. Their poor grasp of the language and scant knowledge of their rights –as well as fear of deportation -make them easy targets of exploitation and maltreatment.

The National Museum has opened an exhibition highlighting the personality cult of the first Czechoslovak communist president, Klement Gottwald. The exhibition, named Laboratory of Power, is located in Prague´s Vítkov Memorial which the communist regime turned into a mausoleum for Gottwald after his death in 1953. One of the exhibition’s organizers Marek Junek took me through the underground rooms built for the army of people who took care of the embalmed body for nine long years. He started out by explaining how the memorial underwent a significant

You may know the feeling – you return to your native village after a long absence and come across an eyesore – a building that screams “money, power and influence” and sticks out like a sore thumb from its surroundings. That is the kind of building that architect and photographer Jan Kruml likens to a flashing gold tooth.

Getting youngsters to play outside on a sunny day is an increasingly difficult task. Most parents now find it near impossible to pry their children away from their computers and compared to the wonders of virtual reality kids no longer find outdoor activities as attractive. Czech designer Pavel Tuma and his team have now unveiled a revolutionary 5-D playground that aims to change that.