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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.

A black and white photograph of a smiling Jewish girl unearthed in a photographer’s studio some years ago has led a young Czech journalist to piece together the dramatic story of a large group of Jewish children who were smuggled to Denmark to escape the Holocaust. While the story of the Nicolas Winton children is well known, this one is only just coming to light and will hopefully reunite long-lost friends scattered around the globe. The freelance journalist who is singlehandedly tackling the task is Judita Matyasova whom I invited to the studio.

Computers and the internet have become an integral part of our lives to such an extent that it is hard to imagine how we ever managed without them. However a recent survey conducted by the Czech Statistical Office shows that Czechs are still lagging behind many EU states when it comes to computer literacy and internet access.

Aggressive behavior in young children and adolescents is on the rise and there are indications that parents are increasingly unable to deal with it. Schoolteachers are ringing alarm bells and therapists are warning of the dire consequences of failing to deal with the problem in time.

A centuries old tradition –the pig-slaughtering feast – will soon be a thing of the past. Those who consider the gory ritual an act of barbarism are cheering, others for whom it is an important part of village folklore are determined to maintain it at any price.

It is the country’s most smelly specialty – Olomoucké tvarůžky – dubbed by foreign visitors as “the stinky cheese of Olomouc” is not something you can easily overlook. Its pungent odor hits you the minute you open the fridge and will render you a social outcast several hours after consuming it. However many consider it to be one of the country’s biggest delicacies and the Czech Republic fought and won a six-year war with Germany and Austria over a protected geographical status trademark.