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This week marks exactly 55 years since the construction of Prague’s Metro began, although at the time, the plan envisaged just building a tunnel for an underground tramway. The Metro went into service eight years later, in May 1974. The first underground train with three carriages ran between nine stations on line C.

Schoolchildren and teachers are nearing the end of difficult semesters of intermittent distance learning due to the coronavirus crisis. The Ministry of Education is recommending teachers prepare assessments of students rather than give out traditional marks. But how best to assess students’ performance has been a subject of some contention and consternation.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Czech economy was enjoying greater economic growth than most of its European Union peers, due to sound economic policies, openness to foreign direct investment and global value chains helped to lift productivity, employment, wages and living standards, as the OECD noted in a December country report. What is the outlook for 2021 and beyond?

Top officials in Prague have condemned the storming of the Capitol building in Washington by supporters of President Trump. The Czech prime minister described the incident as an unprecedented attack on democracy, while the president said election results could not be overturned by force.

Based in New York since the early 2010s, Marie Tomanová is one of the most successful young Czech photographers. Her biggest impact to date has been with the portrait series Young American, focused on a new generation for whom old gender stereotypes no longer apply, and last year she brought her work to Tokyo and Berlin.

The annual Three Kings Collection, the biggest charitable fundraising drive in the Czech Republic, officially gets underway on Wednesday. In a normal year – and the collection organised by Catholic charity Caritas has been going for two decades – children dressed as the “three wise men” Kašpar, Melichar and Baltazar would be carolling and leaving the initials ‘K + M + B’ above door frames as a blessing.

The Czech Ministry of Health has presented the details of its coronavirus vaccination plan. Composed of four stages, it will see over 80-year-olds and selected priority groups inoculated first, followed by pensioners and people with relevant health problems. The wider population is expected to start receiving the jab from April.

Charles Games, the studio behind the award-winning game ‘Attentat 1942’, about the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, was established as a spin-off of Charles University in collaboration with historians at the Czech Academy of Sciences. As such, it represents a unique connection between the academic sphere and the gaming business. The studio will soon release another interactive game focused on Czech history, called ‘Svoboda 1945: Liberation’. Set in the present day in a village in the Sudetenland, the border region from where millions of ethnic Germans were expelled after the war, like ‘Attentat 1942’ it presents players with multifaceted views on history to interpret, expressed by a cast of characters drawing on real life testimonies.

The Czech Jesuits have completed the first phase of the beatification of Adolf Kajpr, a priest and journalist who was imprisoned both by the Nazis and the Communists. The documents gathered to prove his beatification have been sent to Rome. The final decision will be issued by the pope.

The Czech Republic registered the highest per capita rate of new Covid-19 cases in the world over the last week, when its figure for deaths per million inhabitants was fifth highest. Over 750,000 cases of the virus have now been confirmed since the pandemic hit the country.