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Many Czech towns and cities are filling with video surveillance cameras as an effective way of curbing crime. While many have welcomed the practice, others warn that it could lead to a massive invasion of privacy.

It was meant to be the pride of Brno - the town’s own astronomical clock to rival Prague’s famous Orloj and attract tourists to the Moravian metropolis. Located on the city’s Freedom Square the shiny black six-metre-tall, phallus-shaped clock has attracted praise and insults in equal measure since its unveiling two years ago. As Brno City Hall hoped, it has become the talk of the town but in a slightly different way than expected.

The Czech design industry got off to a strong start this year with a number of major events being held in March. The annual Czech Grand Design awards were presented earlier in the month and Prague hosted a special edition of the now popular Designblok and the newest Dyzajn Márket. So what is Czech design like and what are its biggest challenges?

Twenty years after their Velvet Divorce the Czech Republic and Slovakia maintain exceptionally close ties. The two countries’ presidents have made a tradition of planning their first trip abroad to the former sister state and the two countries’ governments hold a joint session every year to discuss matters of common interest. In the eyes of Czechs, Slovaks are the most favored foreign minority in the country. But do the close to 100,000 Slovaks living and working in the Czech Republic feel at home here? To find out I met up with Martina Gregorova,

The Council of Europe last week released a report criticizing the Czech Republic for the way it treats people with mental disabilities. The criticism targeting the living conditions and rights of this most vulnerable segment of the population is not the first of its kind. The Czech authorities have previously come under fire for using caged beds in mental institutions. On a fact-finding visit to the Czech Republic, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks went further, arguing that many of the patients in mental institutions

Marriage week as a way of celebrating and nurturing the institution of marriage was established in Great Britain in 1996 and has since taken root in ten more countries. At the time of its establishment marriage was the last thing on Czechs minds. The country had recently returned to democracy and young people were on the brink of discovering the world, living a Western life and developing successful careers: everything their parents had been unable to do for four decades. As a result the tradition of marrying at 18 and having a baby within a year

When it comes to housing most young Czechs dream of a trendy city flat but some pioneers of Green Living are heading out of town to re-build country cottages and acquire the skill of making their own home-grown produce.

At a conference co-organized by T-Mobile Czech Republic and the weekly magazine Respekt, representatives of top businesses in the country and those from the non-profit sector came together to discuss how businesses could help society. One of the main topics of discussion was how social responsibility strategies can go hand-in-hand with profitability.

‘Limonádový Joe’ (Lemonade Joe) is a cult sixties Czech western cum musical about a lemonade salesman in the Wild West. The film started life as column in a newspaper written by Jiří Brdečka during the war, before becoming a theatre play, and then finally the all-singing, all-dancing, film production Czechs know and love today. Tereza Brdečková is a film critic and the daughter of Jiří Brdečka, the man who conceived the movie:

When Barbora Jarešová, the head of marketing at a Prague global real estate services firm, started blogging about cool places, hip design and trendy restaurants in the Czech Republic, it was mostly for her own pleasure and to inform close friends of what’s happening in Prague and other Czech cities. On her website, ProtiMysl, readers can see gorgeous photographs of little-known and unique locations – and to many foreigners, it comes as quite a surprise that there is more to Prague than dumplings, beer and art nouveau buildings. Barbora talkedabout