The Czechs have a special fondness for dubbing films and TV series – for which up to five episodes are voiced in one go. This production line process sometimes results in translations that grate on the ears, but there is more at stake. The Ministry of Education wants it curbed: if school-age children were obliged to start reading the subtitles, they would begin to naturally to learn foreign languages and even apply them in practice. 

When NATO heads of state meet in Chicago this Sunday and Monday, two key worries will be on their minds. In a departure from the past six decades, the US has come to style itself as a Pacific, rather than Atlantic, power. And the Europeans are busy plundering their defense budgets in order to cope with the economic crisis. Any one of those two events alone would have a dramatic effect on how the alliance works. Taken together, they risk pushing NATO into irrelevance, writes the CER’s Tomáš Valášek.

Former head of the Czech anti-corruption police (ÚOKFK), Petr Vincenz, was in at the start of the long investigation that this week culminated  by reeling in top Social Democrat (ČSSD) politician David Rath and seven other suspects in what appears to be a high-profile graft case. Now out of the force, he talks about the preconditions that helped pave the way for such an outcome and his fears and foreboding for how the special police squad that piloted the probe might end up.