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Prague is currently hosting the fifth edition of the annual Czech Space Week festival, which features a wide range of events for experts in the field, as well as for related businesses and the wider public. The launch of the festival was accompanied by a government announcement that Czechia will increase its contribution into European Space Agency (ESA) programmes, a move that should also help domestic companies that are active in the space sector.

Coca-Cola is one of the world's most recognised brands, but if you are someone who’s spent any length of time in the Czech Republic you will likely have noticed that the Czechs have their own alternative – the similarly-named and similar-looking soft drink Kofola. However, Kofola has quite a distinct taste from Coke, Pepsi, and other cola-flavoured drinks – and for foreigners who are new to the Czech beverage, the flavour can come as a bit of a shock. Despite this, popular Swedish blogger SwedishNomad included Kofola on his beverage bucket list as one of the drinks that everyone has to try at least once before they die, so it does have a following abroad, if a somewhat niche one.

Two years ago, a small Czech studio called Play By Ear released an interactive audio game, in which players navigate their way through a mysterious detective story using their smartphones. Now they have put out an English version, called Evidence 111, starring, among others, the famous British actress Rosamund Pike.

What is the European Union and the wider Western world doing to tackle financial crime? And can financial tools be used to curb hostile regimes such as the one in Russia? These are some of the questions that are being explored by the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS), a part of Britain’s leading security think tank - the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). I caught up with the founder and director of CFCS, Tom Keatinge, when he was in Prague attending an event organised by the Prague Security Studies Institute last week. He warned that dirty money is undermining European democracy and I asked him how.

On Monday night, members of the Chinese community in Prague gathered in Prague’s Národní trída, in a show of solidarity with the anti-government protests that have broken out across China. Many donned facemasks to protect themselves and feared to speak openly.

More than a quarter of a million people in Czechia are currently either homeless or facing a housing crisis, according to a study commissioned by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Experts believe that this number is likely to rise in the near future as the effects of the energy crisis become more apparent.

Nine people are in the running to succeed Miloš Zeman as Czech president in elections in January, after fulfilling the necessary criteria. Two, Petr Pavel and Danuše Nerudová, collected 50,000 signatures, while the remainder secured the backing of legislators. But, now the field has officially been declared, who are the candidates?

Friday, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It also marks the start of a worldwide annual campaign against gender-based violence. Here in Czechia a series of events are taking place to address the problem, which has been intensified by the recent Covid pandemic and the ongoing economic crisis.

The European Space Agency announced its new team of astronauts at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris on Wednesday – and among them is Czech fighter pilot Aleš Svoboda. Svoboda is part of the reserve pool, but if he gets to go into space, he will become the second Czech ever to do so.

Tereza Stehlíková is a film and visual artist engaged in cross-disciplinary research at the intersection of art, philosophy, and science. As well as an interest in landscape and place, Stehlíková has devoted much of her career to exploring how the different senses interact with one another – particularly how moving images can be used to communicate embodied experience, how the audio-visual senses can evoke touch, taste, and smell, and the connection of the senses with emotions and memory. On December 1 and 2 she will be hosting a multidisciplinary symposium in Prague, bringing together artists, scientists and philosophers to discuss humans’ relationship to our physical environment.