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For years now many Czech doctors have been collecting sensitive information about their patients. They say that detailed questionnaires on ethnicity, sexual orientation and lifestyle help them provide better care. Now the Health Ministry wants to take this practice further by setting up a central register of patients which would include such sensitive information in conjunction with an identification number, with the help of which any person can easily be traced.

As the Czech Republic's economy continues to grow so too are wages. The average wage in November saw the single highest monthly increase since 1999 and on Monday the government approved an increase to the minimum wage, however it was not as large as originally planned. The increase in wages across the board compounded by the continuing strength of the Czech crown are raising fears that it could affect unemployment.

Two pedestrians - one of them a 4-year-old boy - were knocked down and killed last weekend. The shocking thing is that in both cases the drivers were police officers. What's more, the number of road accidents involving police officers is on the rise.

There seems to be certain confusion around what Mr. Zeman meant by saying he would step in in case the other presidential candidates fail. The media interpret it differently - some papers say Zeman would enter the second round of the election, others call it a second vote, yet others a second election. So, how does the presidential election work?

With President Vaclav Havel's final term in office now drawing quickly to a close, political parties in the Czech Republic have begun preparing themselves for the first round of new presidential elections in January, and one thing has already become very clear: choosing the country's next leader will not be an easy task.

Is there a chance that a new president will be elected in the first attempt or would a election be necessary? For an analysis of possible scenarios Daniela Lazarova spoke to Vladimira Dvorakova, a political analyst at the Prague School of Economics:

The Czech National Bank said this week it would be removing ten and twenty heller coins from circulation within a year. The move is being welcomed by most ordinary Czechs who believe that the tiny aluminium coins do nothing but take up space in wallets. But are they really useless? Dita Asiedu reports:

39 year old Pavel Bem was elected as Prague's new mayor on Thursday. In a secret ballot he received 38 out of 70 votes and became the 6th mayor of Prague since the collapse of Communism in 1989. Alena Skodova has this profile of him:

The government announced this week that the sale of Cesky Telecom, the Czech Republic's largest telecom operator, had collapsed, due to a dispute over the sale price. The failure of the deal marks the second time this week that a Czech government privatisation scheme has come to nothing.

Those of you who are film buffs surely know the American film from the 1980s, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. It was directed by Karel Reisz, a British film director of Czech origin. Karel Reisz died in London earlier this week, at the age of 76. Alena Skodova reports: