Prague City Beat

They’re pretty planes but the scandal surrounding the Czech Republic’s Gripen fighters is looking increasingly ugly.
Following a Swedish TV investigation, in which former Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan admits that corruption surrounded the 2001 decision to buy the jets, police here have decided to reopen the case.
According to a report in today’s Mladá fronta Dnes [...]

Click here to open fullscreen Interactive Panorama.
Stanley demonstrates his latest ‘ear busting’ blues-punk killer electric noise-generating guitar.
Stanley is at it again, building things no one thought of before, things that you imagine and perhaps even hear while lying in bed with a fever. Yes, his latest invention, this fully wired acoustic guitar, not only functions [...]

Czech condom brand Primeros is raising a few eyebrows with its new promotional campaign, prominently featuring the Austrian village of Fucking.
The village, near Salzburg, made international headlines in 2004 when its residents voted on a possible name change.
Weighing up the pros — a tradition dating back to the 11th century — against the cons — [...]

Check out these Russian panelaks. Nice. Must have needed some big brushes. Check out the site for a load of other colorful creations.
(Via the always wonderful BBoing)

Opponents of US plans to build a radar station in the Czech Republic are holding an international conference tomorrow, at Prague’s Municipal Library, entitled Peace to Europe (K Evropě míru).

Participants include Humanist International’s Giorgio Schultze, IALANA’s Reiner Braun, the University of Ostrava’s Professor Jan Keller, philosopher and journalist Professor Erazim Kohák, and Jan Tamáš, spokesman [...]

Aktuálně.cz is reporting that from May onwards, foreigners should be able to buy plots of Czech farmland legally and directly, following an amendment to the existing agriculture laws.
According to a preview of the report, provided to the website by the Agriculture Ministry, the proposed amendment “enables the purchase of state privatized land by all foreigners [...]

Interesting. They are opening up the National Theatre for a few days (16-18) for what they are calling DNY OTEVŘENÝCH DVEŘÍ V OPEŘE. You can take tours of spaces not normally open to the public, see projections of other operas around Europe, and of course catch an opera. If you haven’t been [...]

Just in time for next Tuesday’s festivities, Margot Buff sent us this entertaining excerpt from her Masopust documentary:
Put on your flowered hat and baptize the piglets. It’s
time for Masopust in the Czech Republic.

Offering “latest news for Prague’s visitors,” the ABC Prague weblog is as useful as it is mysterious.
It contains no advertising, its writer is anonymous, and its sources are unknown.
Despite this, ABC Prague posts five or six Czech news stories every day, in English — translations, presumably, of stories in the Czech media.
So who’s behind the [...]

He’s the mayor of Prague and, nationwide, is second only to Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek in the ruling Civic Democratic Party (ODS).
And now he’s taking seven weeks off to climb Mount Everest.
Following a ruling by Prague City Council’s legislative department, Pavel Bém has been given the go-ahead to leave his office for nearly two months [...]

I’ve been interested in UFOs for years — I even wrote my university dissertation on the subject — so I was pleased to find the Czech-language Projekt Záře (”Project Radiance”) website.
Dedicated to the “collection and evaluation of information on UFOs and mysterious phenomena,” the site attempts to keep track of unexpected visitors to Czech airspace, [...]

http://www.prague360.com/horror/
Just stumbled across this…..
Zoom out all the way……

       
Most tourists probably aren’t aware of them, but Prague is dotted with signs designed to make their lives easier.
The brown-and-white pictograms depict major tourist landmarks, metro stations, post offices, first-aid posts, and the Petřín hill funicular.
There’s a full list of them on the Prague Information Service (Pražská informační služba) website.
Please study them carefully — there’ll [...]

Originally posted on Stumpy Moose:
Introduction
I first arrived in Prague on November 1st, 1996.
Arriving at the Zelivskeho coach stand, after a tortuous overnight bus journey, with a girl I’d been going out with for only a few months, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.
Now, all of a sudden, it’s 10 years [...]

Stories about the Czech Republic’s video game industry normally focus on the big two — Bohemia Interactive Studio and Illusion Softworks — but one of the country’s smaller developers now has a hit on its hands.
Cinemax, based in Prague 5-Zbraslav, is the studio behind Gumboy Crazy Adventures, a quirky PC platform game starring — as [...]

The Czech Republic is officially in the grip of a ‘flu epidemic.
Last Tuesday, the National Institute of Public Health (Státní zdravotní ústav) reported 2,322 cases of influenza for every 100,000 Czech citizens — a rise of 4.2 percent on the previous week.
Along with South Bohemia and Olomouc, Prague was one of only three Czech regions [...]

Štefánikův most has been shut down. Again. The constructions is slated to finish in September.
Unbelievable. It feels like they’ve just been open a couple months following the closure related to the recon of Namesti Republiky and the building of SUPERMALL.
The closure means [...]

Continuing this week’s YouTube theme, here’s some video of a bizarre Czech car accident.
After watching it a couple of times, I think I know what’s going on, but I’m still not entirely sure…
(Apologies, by the way, for the feeble sexism of the original title.)