The 2024 Ice Hockey World Championships are well underway in the Czech cities of Prague and Ostrava. The tournament, which brings together teams representing 16 nations, is held annually in alternating host cities. As the group stage of the tournament winds down, excited fans are anticipating who will play who in the quarterfinal matches in what has already been a competitive tournament. Here’s a quick rap up of what’s been going on.

The great Czech architect Eva Jiřičná has been living in the UK for many decades. But the biggest project in the 85-year-old’s career, a 1,000-apartment development, is set to go up in Prague. I spoke to Jiřičná on Monday at a presentation of Centrum Nového Žižkova, New Žižkov Centre, on which she collaborated with the UK’s Arup Group. Plans for the complex were first revealed five years ago, but they have been forced to change considerably since then.

Every year, Czechs consume millions of chickens, leaving behind tons of feathers as a by-product. The feathers typically end up in incinerators or on landfills. Czech scientists have now come up with a way of repurposing this by-product – turning it into liquid fertiliser.

Just ahead of the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death, new translations of short stories by the Prague German-language writer come out this week. Entitled Selected Stories, the collection is the work of Mark Harman, an Irish-born, US-resident academic who has been described as “the finest living Kafka translator” into English. From his home in Pennsylvania, Professor Harman discussed many aspects of the author’s work, including his distinctive style, his sense of humour and where he stands in the literary pantheon.

As Russia steps up its offensive in Ukraine, the country’s leadership is stressing the urgent need for more weapons and soldiers to hold the front. In an exclusive interview for Czech Radio, Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov spoke about the military’s most urgent needs, the call to action for Ukrainian citizens abroad and the need to boost Ukraine’s own weapons‘ production capacity with foreign investment.

Disappointed fans, crying children, angry parents: some of the scenes that could be witnessed at the turnstiles to hockey arenas in Prague and Ostrava when excited ticket holders realised the passes they had bought to the 2024 IIHF World Championship were fakes. The police have so far uncovered hundreds of cases and one person is being prosecuted.

The 2024 World Hockey Championships are well underway in Prague and Ostrava. One week into the tournament, there have already been memorable moments and upsets, making this year’s tournament one to remember. To check in on how team Czechia is doing, I spoke with Czech Radio sports reporter Adam Weidenthaler, who’s been covering the championship in Prague.

Czechs are satisfied with their sex life despite having sex significantly less frequently than they did a decade ago. That is the  main message to come out of a survey carried out by the National Institute of Mental Health. It also shows that dating in Czechia is increasingly moving online.

Czech firms have increasingly been looking across the ocean at opportunities to expand to North American markets, specifically in fields such as IT. But what specific skills can Czech born businesses offer these already competitive marketplaces, and why is now a good time for expansion? I put those questions to CEO of COPS Solutions, Ondřej Dvořák.

In the previous episode of ‘In Kafka’s Footsteps’, we visited the town of Frýdlant, believed to have inspired Kafka’s novel ‘The Castle’. But there is another contender vying for the same accolade: the village of Siřem, a tiny hamlet in northern Bohemia surrounded by hop fields. It was here that Kafka went to stay after being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917, in search of peace, fresh air and nature on his sister's farm.