Panorama | All stories

Czechs are looking back at 20 years in NATO. Their country joined the Alliance together with Hungary and Poland on March 12, 1999. Since then NATO has grown significantly and undertaken several major international military operations. Vít Pohanka highlights the most important developments in the Alliance over that time and how the Czech Republic participated in them.

Daniela Mauleon Davidova is one of the many Czech entrepreneurs who have decided to set up a business far from home. Her start-up, making fair trade jams in Tanzania, is not merely a business venture; it aims to improve the life of the local community by giving people a job and skills that they can make good use of in the future. Her project has received support from the Czech Development Agency. I met up with Daniela shortly before her departure for Zanzibar and began by asking why she chose for make fair trade jams.

Behind the scenes, a ‘subsidy war’ is raging in Central Europe among national film commissions, which have been steadily sweetening rebates and incentives to attract lucrative Hollywood and other foreign productions. Czech Film Commissioner Pavlína Žipková says 2018 was a record year in spending and shooting days, with foreign productions – especially TV series – drawn in by top-notch crews, services and “eleven centuries of architecture” for locations.

The World Health Organization is ringing alarm bells as an increasing number of European countries, including the Czech Republic are fighting an outbreak of measles. Measles cases in Europe tripled in 2018, and the reasons are the same - immunization hesitancy which has interfered with maintaining a high coverage rate in the population and greater movement of people.

If you visit the Czech countryside at the start of the year you are likely to receive an invitation to attend a "zabijačka" – in other words a pig-slaughter feast; a centuries old tradition that is still observed in many parts of the country. While for some it is a barbaric practice that has no place in the present-day, for others it is an important part of village folklore that brings people together.

Which Central Europeans are most likely to believe conspiracy theories? Which are most nostalgic for the communist regime or pro-NATO? The answers may well surprise you, say researchers at Globsec, a Bratislava-based think-tank focused on security and sustainability in Europe. Katarína Klingová and Miroslava Sawiris, two of the co-authors of the Globsec report “Generation Trends”, spoke to Radio Prague about what the data reveal about the complexity of regional perceptions of geopolitics. I began by asking them about orientation – East or West?

You could be forgiven for mistaking the CyberDog Technology and Information Centre on the outskirts of Prague for a “wine bar”, the futuristic two-storey structure housing it for a “building”, and the resident bartender named “Kuka” for a hermaphrodite robot. Such is the nature of the first project to be realised by the Black N' Arch studio, co-founded by conceptual artist and sculptor David Černý.

A group of Czech senators recently accused President Miloš Zeman of gross violation of the Constitution and began drafting an official bill of impeachment. However, the chances of the liberal Senator 21 group finding the support to force out the head of state seem extremely slim. But why is it so hard to remove a Czech president?

In a world still ruled by men, Hana Podolská –later dubbed the Czech “Coco Chanel” –fulfilled her childhood dream – she married a man who loved her passionately and built up a family fashion empire. Her clothes and fashion advice was sought after by the film stars of the First Republic, the wives of rich entrepreneurs and the country’s first ladies. But the communist take-over robbed her of everything she had worked hard to achieve and she died abandoned and forgotten in the harsh normalization years following the crushing of the Prague Spring.

Whether it is glutton-free, paleo, vegan or just low-carb, the modern world offers special diets for the most selective consumers. But how does one eat when all but the most basic foodstuffs are cut off? That was the question that Czechs living during the Protectorate era between 1939 and 1945 had to ask themselves nearly every day.