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Business NewsBusiness News
In today's Business News: Czech living standards are improving, but many
households are also struggling with debt; Czech uranium mines are looking
to attract new investment; over one hundred thousand vehicles have already
been registered in the new road-toll system, and this week's snowfall
costs
CSA millions of Czech crowns in lost sales. More
PanoramaThe Child of Prague
Prague's Church of Our Lady Victorious on Karmelitska - or Carmelite -
Street is home to one of the most revered images in the Roman Catholic
world, the Bambino di Praga, or Child of Prague. We'll come to the famous
statue in a moment, but first let's find out a little about the Church of
Our Lady Victorious, and its troubled history.
More
Czech ScienceCommercial fertiliser - end product of uranium mines clean-up
Uranium was considered a highly strategic material by socialist
Czechoslovakia and thanks to the country's rich reserves mining was quite
extensive. It has had a serious impact on the environment which will take
decades to clean up. Czech scientists have come up with a solution
tailored for one particular mining area - using the by-products of uranium
mining to produce - commercial fertiliser. More
SpotlightSvaty Jan pod Skalou (St. John under the Cliff)
In this week's Spotlight, we visit the picturesque little village Svaty Jan
pod Skalou, some thirty km southwest of Prague and only nine kilometres
away from the popular gothic Karlstejn Castle. Despite a population of
only 120, Svaty Jan pod Skalou, translated into Saint John under the
Cliff, boasts a large number of beautifully preserved historical
monuments. This, thanks to the efforts of the St. John Society, which was
established by local inhabitants after the fall of Communism to restore
and bring back to life the treasures, left unattended and damaged by the
Communist government.
More
Czech BooksVaclav Cilek: "Prague: Between History and Dreams" - digging through the layers of an ancient land
"Relationships created over hundreds of years can't be easily
destroyed - relationships to those complicated yet ordinary things: wood,
soil, the landscape. The unique awareness in mind and heart of those
things that form the essence of a place is called genius loci - something
that cannot be given a name, but to which we always return."
Welcome to Czech Books. Those were a few lines from the beginning of a
fascinating new book by the 49-year-old Prague writer, geologist and
philosopher, Vaclav Cilek. It's called "Prague: Between History and
Dreams" and offers an extraordinary journey into the different layers
of the past and present of Prague and the towns and countryside around.
The book is full of unusual and quirky insights - historical details,
legend, philosophical reflection and observations from everyday life - a
refreshing alternative to the rather dull, ponderous style beloved of the
writers of guidebooks. Vaclav Cilek is quite simply different. For a
start, he is well known as the Czech Republic's foremost expert on
tunnels, caves and catacombs. As he told me when he came to visit our
studio last week, this fascination colours his writing.
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SpotlightJachymov - birthplace of the mighty dollar
In this week's Spotlight, Rob Cameron visits Jachymov, a lonely mining town in the Ore Mountains which has played an important role in the history of modern man. It was here in the 16th century that the first "Joachimsthaler" coins were minted; nicknamed "tolars" by the Czechs, the popular solid silver coins spread across the Hapsburg Empire and into the New World, where they eventually became the currency of the fledgling United States. It was also Jachymov where miners first came across lumps of deadly black ore, which centuries later was identified as uranium. Join Rob as he tours this extraordinary town, and descends 500 metres into the earth to see the former uranium mines, dubbed "Jachymov Hell" by political prisoners of the Communist regime. All that and more, in this week's Spotlight.
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