Panorama | All stories

The Prague-based NGO Helppes trains assistance dogs for people with disabilities. Established in 2001, it trains about 15 service dogs a year and is the only organization of its kind in the Czech Republic which has achieved the high standard required for membership in Assistant Dog Europe and Assistant Dog International. For this week’s Panorama I went to see one of its dog handlers, Zuzana Rajtrová, to find out more about how it works.

Last year doctors performed around 23,000 surgical abortions in the Czech Republic, a fifth of them for health reasons. Now women who decide to end their pregnancy in its early stages have the option of using the newly available abortion pill RU 486. While many women welcome the chance to replace surgical abortion with a less invasive method of inducing miscarriage, critics and pro-life activists are vehemently protesting the pill’s registration.

The centenary of the great Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal’s birth is being marked by film screenings, book readings and literary debates at home and abroad. One of the most original events has been organized by the Czech Centre in London – a groundbreaking literary experiment going under the name Cabaret Hrabal. Ahead of the big night I spoke to the head of the Czech Centre Tereza Porybná to find out more about the show.

The National Heritage Institute which is responsible for the protection and preservation of the country’s historical monuments has over 100 palaces, castles and manor houses in its care. Over the past 20 years it has worked hard to restore many of those long-neglected buildings to their former glory and today they represent the best part of the country’s national heritage. Regrettably, many of those outside Prague remain undiscovered by foreign tourists. Tomáš Brabec of the National Heritage Institute says this is something that the institute is

The Czech Republic has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe with one in three marriages –and every second marriage in Prague – hitting the rocks. Custody battles abound and in 95 percent of all cases custody is given to the mother. Now two verdicts by the Czech Constitutional Court, which went in favour of joint custody, have stirred public debate about whether the country is on the brink of a new trend and whether such a trend would undisputedly benefit the child.

The number of personal bankruptcies has been growing in recent years hitting a record high of over 19,000 in 2013, a sign that many Czechs still have a problem managing their finances. A recent poll conducted by the finance ministry showed that two thirds of Czechs were not sure about the difference between a banking card and a credit card and respondents admitted they spend on average around five minutes studying a loan contract they are going to sign. I spoke to David Šmejkal the head of a Prague-based advisory office for people with financial

Elections to the European Parliament came and went almost unnoticed in the Czech Republic, where over 80 percent of voters simply ignored them. The record-low turnout of 18.2 percent was surpassed only in neighbouring Slovakia where a mere 13 percent of voters bothered to cast their ballot. Why did the Czechs and Slovaks – who are closely bound by history – turn their backs on the European elections? Political analyst Jiří Pehe says it may not be a coincidence and argues that both the past and present have played a role in forming these

Hana Dubová was a Jewish girl from the town of Kolín living a normal, happy life surrounded by family and friends. She was just 14 when this carefree existence was brought to an abrupt end by the Nazi occupation. Hana was put on a train to Denmark, escaping with her bare life, never to see her friends and family again and unaware of the fact that she would move alone from place to place for eleven long years before she found a new home. Her American daughter Janet and granddaughter Rachael recently visited Europe to trace Hana’s footsteps and reconnect

Look at some of the small town exhibitions currently underway and you can’t miss the trend – they all show vintage objects very often made up of stuff people find in their attics. The “out with the old and in with the new” fervor with which people cleaned out their attics just a few decades ago is long gone and families now treasure old family coffee grinders, foreign label-covered suitcases that belonged to seasoned family travelers or wooden weaving looms used by great grandmothers.

Three years ago Prague Zoo launched its biggest conservation project to date – helping to save the Przewalski horse from extinction. The zoo successfully breeds these Mongolian wild horses here in the Czech Republic and then transports them to the Mongolian steppes to enrich the gene pool of a small protected herd that is to help the endangered breed survive. I met up with the zoo’s spokeswoman Jana Ptáčinská Jirátová to find out how the project has been coming along.