Radio Prague International - latest articles

The Czech Republic’s video games industry has become one of the country’s major exporters in recent years. At the same time, it is facing a shortage of experienced game designers. To improve the situation on the market and respond to a growing demand from students, Prague’s FAMU film school will open a new department specialising in video games design.

Over the past few days, the Covid-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic has slightly slowed down. Nevertheless, hospitals around the country continue to struggle with a serious shortage of medical staff. The Ministry of Health is currently negotiating with the World Health Organisation to help secure nurses and doctors to help out in the fight against Covid-19.

A man searching for mushrooms close to his home came across a 3,300-year-old sword from the Bronze Age. The rare item has excited archaeologists who say they plan to dig in the surrounding area.

Danish historian and translator Peter Bugge has played a significant role in promoting Czech language, literature and culture in his homeland. Among other things, he helped to create an independent Bohemian Studies program at the University of Aarhus and translated works by Václav Havel and Karel Čapek into Danish. Last month, Peter Bugge received the Gratias Agit Award from the Czech Foreign Ministry for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic. I caught up with him on the occasion to discuss his ties to the Czech Republic and I started by asking him about his impressions of Czechoslovakia when he first visited the country back in 1976.

Rudolf Zahradník, one of the fathers of Czech research into quantum chemistry, died aged 92 on Saturday. The former chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences was also the mentor of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, when she studied chemistry in Prague.

One of the country’s biggest WWII heroes, pilot Josef Koukal, who fought in the Battle of Britain, last week received the Order of the White Lion, the country’s highest state distinction, in memoriam. The man who served his homeland selflessly in the fight for freedom never lived to see the recognition he deserved.

A rare seventeenth century wooden church burned down in Prague on Wednesday. The building, which had been transported to Prague from Carpathian Ruthenia during the interwar era, was completely destroyed. Prague City Hall has since announced it intends to start a fundraiser to rebuild the church.

Why are patients with serious cases of Covid-19 placed on their stomachs? Doctors say the so-called “prone” position helps intubated patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. There is now an ongoing medical debate about whether positioning on the abdomen could help patients with less severe cases of Covid-19 infection as well.

Despite difficulties resulting from the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, a unique new exhibition is being prepared in the North Bohemian city of Ústí nad Labem. Called “Naši Němci” (Our Germans), it aims to introduce visitors to the history of Czech-German cohabitation in the area of the Czech lands. Spanning over a thousand year, the exhibition will use many methods to bring the past to life, including an early-twentieth century Sudeten pub.

The Czech Republic, as well as the rest of the world, has been facing a serious decline in the numbers of insects. But how many insect individuals are really out there? And do their numbers differ across the continents? An international team of scientists led by Czech ecologist Vojtěch Novotný set out to explore these questions. They collected data for their study from forests on three continents, evaluating them for 14 years. The results were recently published in the scientific magazine Ecology Letters.