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High rates of unemployment and malnourishment, poor infrastructure and a lack of skilled labour make Zambia one of the least developed countries in the world. But supporting small businesses and farmers is one of the ways Czech development cooperation is helping to bring about change.

The confluence of the Morava and Dyje rivers in South Moravia is set to be declared a protected landscape area, the Ministry of Environment has just announced. The “Moravian Amazon”, as it is sometimes referred to, contains the largest complex of alluvial forests in Central Europe – and may even be declared a national park in the future.

Miroslav Beinhauer is a pianist and player of the sixth-tone harmonium, an instrument conceived by the Czech pioneer of microtonal music Alois Hába in the 1930s. Beinhauer, who is probably the only person in the world to master this unique instrument, only started to play it a few years ago, when he took part in the first ever performance of Hába’s sixth-tone opera Thy Kingdom Come. Since then, he has also encouraged contemporary composers to create new repertoire for the half-forgotten instrument.

In ex-Yugoslavia in 1997, Vladimir Dzuro delivered the first European war crimes indictment from an international tribunal since WWII. The Czech also investigated the notorious 1991 massacre of Croat POWs at Ovčara near Vukovar. His story is recounted in The Investigator, a documentary by Viktor Portel that enters Czech cinemas this week. I spoke to Dzuro on the eve of its release.

Petr Václav’s Il Boemo triumphed in no fewer than six categories, including Best Film and Best Director, at the Czech Lion awards on Saturday. The biopic of 18th century Czech composer Josef Mysliveček trumped the psychological drama Arvéd, which had 12 nominations but ended up with just three statuettes.

A significant percentage of the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have fled to Czechia since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine are children. The nature of the conflict means that some of them arrive into the country completely unaccompanied by adults, or by just a part of their extended family. To find out what the government is doing to address the needs of this especially vulnerable group I spoke to Diana Šmídová, the secretary of the Committee on the Rights of the Child at the Office of Government.

Wednesday will see Miloš Zeman step down after 10 years as Czech head of state. But where does Mr. Zeman stand among the major figures of post-1989 Czech politics? And what will his legacy as president be? I discussed those questions with Dr. Sean Hanley of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London.

Czechia has produced some fantastic female tennis players, one of them being Andrea Sestini Hlaváčková. Over the course of her career, she has garnered Grand Slam titles, and a silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, bringing Czechia to the centre stage of international women’s tennis. Andrea recently visited Radio Prague’s studio to talk about her career, life after tennis, and her sports show on Czech Radio.

US journalist Mark Baker spent time in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s and was long curious whether the Communist state’s secret police kept a file on him. Eventually he did discover that not only was he being monitored in the dying days of the Cold War – the StB also wanted to recruit him as a spy. Baker, who in 2021 published the memoir Čas proměn (Times of Change), has just begun sharing this story – filled with eye-popping details – in a series of blog posts .

A new, never seen before product has hit the Czech market – a smart cradle. Developed by the Czech company Loonoy, the cradle is the result of more than five years of development and promises to make parenting a little easier for Czechs willing to spill some extra cash. The CEO of Loonoy, Adam Rumler, says that he got the idea while watching Hulk in the Avengers film series.