Talking Point | All stories

At his office in downtown Prague, Jan Hájek describes his company’s unusual services. They sell experiences, zážitky in Czech, and the name of their firm is zážitky.cz. The odd thing is that to get to their internet site you have to use either the address zazitky.cz or zážitky.com. The former, like all domain names ending in .cz, does not allow an important feature of the Czech language: diacritics (such as the ‘little hook’ on the letter ř). But why not?

Today, energy from nuclear power plants provides for roughly a third of the Czech Republic’s overall electricity consumption. There are in fact six operating nuclear power plant units – four of them have been operating for twenty years in Dukovany, and two of them have been operating for almost ten years in Temelín, in south Bohemia. The rest of the Czech Republic’s energy needs are met by domestic coal as well as imported gas. But the country has recently begun to wrestle with how it will meet its energy needs in the future, and more nuclear power

The Czech Republic boasts one of the lowest rates of prenatal and natal mortalities in the world, yet paradoxically, criticism of Czech maternity hospitals is growing. Mothers complain that doctors regard childbirth as a strictly medical procedure, forgetting that it is first and foremost a natural process and as such should be directed by the mothers themselves. Some mothers who have previously given birth at maternity hospitals are so dissatisfied with the experience that they opt to bring their second child into the world at home with the help

“Any reason for sorting waste is a good one” is a slogan underlining a current TV campaign promoting recycling in the Czech Republic, and most Czechs would agree recycling is a necessity. By and large, Czechs are conscientious recyclers, with around 70 percent regularly recycling plastics, paper, glass and other materials. In fact, statistics recently released by Eurostat revealed that Czechs are leaders when it comes to plastics: in 2006 they recycled 44 percent of PET beverage bottles and other packaging – which is 3 percent more than traditional

It's hard to pick up a newspaper anywhere these days without reading about the global economic meltdown precipitated by the collapse of a number of US banks, which has sent shockwaves across the globe. Remarkably, the Czech Republic and Central Europe seem to be relatively insulated from the crisis.

I’m standing in the exhibition hall of the Czech Senate and in front of me is an official copy of the Munich Agreement, the notorious 1938 document that ceded the Sudeten territories in Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. It is a four page document that is written in German, with a series of numbered points on it. At the bottom of the document are the clearly visible signatures of Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. But this act of appeasement didn’t work and ended up leading to the Second

Czech law is structured in such a way that non-prescription drugs can be freely advertised, while prescription drugs cannot. This has led to a totally unregulated culture of lobbying by pharmaceutical companies, desperate to get doctors to take notice of their prescription drugs. Sometimes, these lobbying efforts take the form of free pens or magazines and leaflets, but other times, they include far more expensive free gifts and even exotic holidays under the guise of inviting doctors to so called “conferences.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a landlocked country, the Czech Republic has one of the lowest rates of fish consumption in the European Union. Czechs eat around five kilograms of the stuff on average each year. But oddly enough, this country is also one of Europe's largest fish producers – and most of the thousands of tonnes of carp, sander, and other freshwater species farmed here end up being exported elsewhere on the continent. Now though, the government has launched a new campaign to encourage Czechs to eat more of their own home-grown fish.

“And I regret some of the recent behaviour that Russia has exhibited, and I’ll be glad to talk about that later including the reduction of oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they agreed with us on a missile defence system…” That was Republican presidential candidate John McCain talking in New Mexico earlier this summer.

“A lot of people are curious about what lies behind your resignation. You had a brilliant career; your record is impeccable – they want to know why you suddenly left.” “What people?” “Now personally I do believe your story that it was a matter of principle, but what I think doesn’t really count, does it?” “...I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned."