The Czech police has detained a man suspected of working for a Chinese intelligence service and charged him with “unauthorised activity on behalf of a foreign power.” He is the first person to be prosecuted for this offence, which was introduced into Czech law by the previous government.

Nineteen-year-old Nikola Bartůňková has taken Melbourne by storm at her very first Grand Slam, stunning world number ten Belinda Bencic to reach the third round of the Australian Open. She is one of several Czech players still in the tournament — but the teenage newcomer is the story everyone is talking about.

Over the past five years, total fertility rate in Czechia has fallen from 1.83 to below 1.3 children per woman. While declining fertility is a trend shared by most countries of comparable wealth, the drop in Czechia is among the steepest – fifth worldwide. What lies behind it? What has Covid-19 got to do with it? And what has changed since the 1990s?  Radio Prague International spoke with sociologist Martin Kreidl to find out.

Miloš Forman Square in central Prague is set for a major transformation. This week, city officials announced the winner of an international architectural competition for the site at the end of Pařížská, Czechia’s most expensive street, near the Vltava riverbank. The redesign will be led by the Danish studio ADEPT.

Scientists from the Faculty of Technology and the Centre of Polymer Systems at Tomas Bata University in Zlín are developing an advanced model of the human small intestine. The main goal behind this effort is to replace animal testing in developing new drugs.

An image capturing a miner at work has won the main prize at this year’s Czech Press Photo competition. Photographer Lukáš Kaboň was awarded for documenting life underground as the country’s last operating hard coal mine approaches closure. The lifetime achievement award went to veteran documentary photographer Viktor Kolář.

In just over two weeks, the 2026 Winter Olympic Games will get under way in northern Italy. The Czech Republic is pinning its hopes not only on its skiers, snowboarders and speed skaters, but also on its ice hockey team. Hockey fans will be interested to learn that the pucks used at the Games are made in the Czech Republic – in a small town in Moravia.

Czech type designers have become significant players in the field of global typography – the design of glyphs and letterforms, better known as fonts. As Dominik Jůn discovered, this field of artistic graphic design is also strongly linked to Czech history and national identity.

Czech scientists have announced an extraordinary discovery in the Moravian Karst in South Moravia. Inside one of the region’s caves, they found a rare engraving of a horse — an image created around 15,000 years ago, at the very end of the last Ice Age, when people still lived in and around caves.

The Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka met his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó in Prague for talks focused on energy, migration and regional cooperation. Both ministers highlighted what they described as long-standing political alignment between their governments. The meeting also touched on the war in Ukraine, the situation around Greenland, and differing views within the European Union.