Prague News

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Culture Minister Václav Jehlička certainly did not expect it: Every time he was reached for the microphone, a crowd of people in the back of the room raised their hands holding worn-out shoes. The Forum for Creative Europe, held in Prague last week as part of the Czech EU presidency, was an event the minister will not easily forget. And not just him.

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The emotions that the current governmental crisis evokes for me and my generation are mostly very negative. We are disenchanted, we are losing some of our illusions, some of our securities. All this, however, does not necessarily have to be bad for us.

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One of the most beautiful Prague gardens is opening again after the winter break - Valdstein garden on the Senate grounds. A unique collection of sculptures, statues of horses and the Sala terrena with a fountain are available to visitors.

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The fall of the Czech government is coming at a very unfortunate time, not only for us, but this time also for all of Europe and even for the entire world. The government collapsed in the middle of the Czech presidency of the European Union and at a time when it needs to push through anti-crisis measures in the parliament and come up with new ones.

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If Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek looked calm immediately after his government lost a no confidence vote, it was probably just a facade. Because Wednesday showed that the Czech PM is losing control again.

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Why we should not end up on a shelf without a ceremony A question in a contest: Under the current laws, can a widow who has just seen her husband die in bed at home, keep vigil at his bedside for three days and then have a funeral procession march with the coffin from the entrance door of their Prague pre-fab flat as was the tradition in the time of our great-grandmothers? Try asking your doctor, a clerk, or a spokesman at the nearest hospital. They will probably not know.

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On the weekend, the Social Democrats did not succeed in electing a vice-chairwoman as set by the party statutes, and this time the quotas were to pay for it – a tool that political parties normally use to help women in politics.

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"Every healthy female of any given vertebrate reproduces more than once in a life time. Only the one with bad luck who died on her first delivery could produce an only child." This is what you can read in a publication entitled What you don't know about the young ones. It is a cute children's book about animals. However, the same arguments are used in Czech society and only very rarely does someone note that people are not mice. Czech females therefore have a difficult task to convince their fellow mates that they can be useful to mankind even if they deliver only one baby or none.

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This discreet experiment, which today enters its fourth day in Prague, would not be worth talking about under normal circumstances. After long-lasting disputes, the municipal authority of Prague 2 decided to narrow the number of lanes on the city's north-south artery from four to three.

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Most houses are abandoned, and those that have tenants are mostly broken-down apartment buildings inhabited by problem citizens. The scene is to change for the better this year, however. And local children are to play an important role in this transformation.

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"It is great material to work with. Finally we get to work on something authentic. It seems like we have until now been stuck in times of Havlíček Borovský," said a 23-year-old student of journalism dressed in a colourful shirt on the ground floor of Charles University's Faculty of Social Sciences on the Vltava bank. A new social studies course, which was first introduced in November last year, is starting in just a few minutes. Entitled "The Kundera case in Czech media 2008", the course, which is taught within the media studies programme, aims to help students find out for example how today's media cover our communist past and what impact it has on Czechs.

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A new genre of something like a local reality show has emerged in the Czech Republic. Moving in with poor Roma into a decrepit pre-fab house for a couple of days and then narrating how disgusting and revolting it is to the whole nation. One cannot help but agree, especially when it is Mladá fronta Dnes, our "biggest daily newspaper" that presents us so perfectly and vividly with such a report.

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The Prague Stock Exchange (BCPP) will be, according to a series of articles in the media, experiencing a revolution at the end of next week. The new owner will modernise the technology used for trading (called SPAD) and bring in American banks.

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President Obama's administration might be willing to give up the planned anti-missile shield in central Europe in exchange for Russia's help with Iran. This plan caused a storm of indignation in the Czech Republic last week.

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Some of the Czech media have, both in their news coverage and in their comments (for instance Lidové noviny) dealt with the fact that new US President Barack Obama has written off the radar in Brdy. It has not been stated clearly (that probably doesn't happen in politics and diplomacy), but let's be honest with ourselves and say that it's becoming quite obvious.

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While the Culture Ministry needs to operate with CZK 8 billions this year (out of which one billion will be given away to various churches and other religious organisations), the 14-day-long event near Ještěd received more than CZK 2 billion from the government and the Liberec region.

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You could say that the difference between the totalitarian regime of the 80s and today's democratic system are so different that only someone ignorant or someone with no memory could fail to see that. And yet, only one in four high school students today thinks that life today is better than it was under the communist regime. And 21% think that life under the communism was better or the same.

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Last Tuesday the European Commission announced its list of "green cities" for the next two years. Prague was not among them, even though it entered the competition for cities with the best environmental protection and the best plan to increase the quality of life of their residents. Stockholm and Hamburg must have won only by accident with so much strong competition.

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Within a few weeks, bulldozers will start tearing down the Ještěd department store in Liberec. A number of buildings from the 1960s and 70s will most likely meet a similar fate. Should we feel bad about that? What do we do with socialist-era architecture? Tear it down or protect it?

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It is a well-known fact – the Czech Republic is Europe's number one recycler and sorter of plastics. However, the successful and profitable system got stuck now. The economic crisis has decreased interest in sorted waste, which is now piling up in the warehouses of companies dealing with the collection of recyclable waste.