Panorama | All stories

It would be hard to find a country where the saying “a dog is man’s best friend” is more apt than in the Czech Republic. According to available statistics close to 40 percent of Czechs own dogs – little dogs, big dogs, fury dogs, lapdogs, assistant dogs, guard dogs and status dogs – very often dogs that markedly resemble their owners. So what is the life of a dog like in the Czech Republic?

The Prague branch of the Christian charity Caritas is involved in aid and development projects in many parts of the world, among them India, Zambia, Congo and Uganda. Its work in Uganda, east Africa, spans a decade and involves a broad range of activities. Petra Matulova, Caritas development centre director, explains how one form of assistance led to another.

Thursday’s trade union transport strike was the biggest anti-government protest since the fall of communism. The prime minister argues that the cabinet’s flagging popularity with the public is the price for pushing through painful reforms. But are the government’s far-reaching reforms the only reason for the growing public discontent? And what –if anything – will this strike bring? In this edition of Panorama Daniela Lazarová asked political analyst Vladimíra Dvořáková for her take on developments.

At the present time there are close to 30,000 children in the Czech Republic whose parents are serving time in prison. Due to the country’s legislation and rooted prejudices family bonds are severed in the worst possible way –the maximum time these children are allowed to spend with their jailed parent is three hours a month – the less fortunate ones are simply told that mummy or daddy went away. The Czech Helsinki Committee is fighting to improve these children’s lot arguing that the restrictions in place can do irreparable damage. I spoke to Monika

Prague Zoo this week announced an important step in its effort to help reintroduce the critically endangered Mongolian wild horse to its natural habitat. Four specimens – one stallion and three mares – born and bred in the Czech Republic are to be transported 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 Ptacinska Jiratova to find out more about the project and how Prague Zoo came to be involved in it.

In 1997, just eight years after the Velvet Revolution, when Czechs were making up for lost time and looking into the future, one man - archeologist Radomír Tichý - was busy looking back. Like the rest of his countrymen he was now fully able to realize his dreams, but those had little to do with mobile phones, DVDs and exotic holidays. Mr. Tichý and his colleagues at Hradec Králové University aimed to recreate history by building an open air museum from the early Stone Age to the late Metal Age.

It’s one of the most Romantic places in the Czech capital. With its charming row of tiny houses built in the Mannerist style Prague’s Golden Lane attracts visitors from near and far. Painters strive to capture its old-world charm and tour-guides elaborate about the colourful personalities that once inhabited them – alchemists who tried to turn stone into gold or make youth elixirs, Franz Kafka who reportedly resided there for a time, or fortune-teller and astrologer Magdalena Prusova also known as Madame de Thebes who was killed by the Gestapo

When Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and her husband Prince Claus visited the Czech Republic in 1993 the head of protocol at Prague Castle went into overdrive. It was the first visit by a foreign royal since the fall of communism and everything had to be perfect. There was just one tiny hitch that made headlines – when the queen visited the North Bohemian brown coal mining region and accepted an invitation for a cup of coffee she was presented with a murky brown mixture - a Turkish-style cup of coffee that has nothing to do with real Turkish coffee.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the official launch of Radio Free Europe, the American-funded broadcaster which was established as an anti-communist source of information during the Cold War and is widely considered to have played a critical role in the ultimate collapse of communism. Now based in Prague, Radio Free Europe continues to provide news and information to countries where independent media reporting is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed. In this edition of Panorama, we look back at the history of Radio

An impromptu production by a small theatre company has become all the rage in Prague. The title of the piece is Blond Bitch and the script is not by a well-known playwright but by life itself or rather by a promising twenty-six-year old Czech politician whose career just went up in smoke in the worst government crisis in the country’s modern history. Blond Bitch is in fact a play based word-for-word on a secret recording made of former Public Affairs deputy leader Kristýna Kočí.