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About eighteen percent of women and six percent of men are affected by migraine - that statistic is valid worldwide. In this country, between 300,000 and 400,000 people are affected by that severe and usually form of headache, frequently associated with nausea and vomiting. Although this chronic and recurring disease makes people's life extremely miserable, as much as 50 percent of migraine sufferers never consult a doctor. Dr Tomas Melichar is behind a new project that tries to make access to treatment easier for migraine patients in the Czech

This past Saturday saw the opening of an all important inter-governmental conference in Rome, bringing together leaders from all fifteen current EU countries and ten countries and slated to join in May next year. On the table: a final phase of negotiations aimed at streamlining the EU's draft constitution, a two-hundred plus page document that will outline, once and for all, a new legal and moral framework for the European Union. Already there have been indications this will not be an easy task. Jan Velinger was in Rome at the weekend and he joins

Tension has mounted around the Czech military field hospital stationed in Iraqi town of Basra over the past few days. The Czech contingent have been accused by an Iraqi religious leader of defaming the Koran, and Wednesday saw a demonstration of more than a thousand people outside the field hospital demanding that the Czechs apologise.

The Beatles have been hugely popular in this country since the 1960s, even though in those days their records were not so easy to find. To honour the group, the Czech Beatles fanclub on Friday unveiled an unusual tribute - four oak trees bearing their names in the beautiful Pruhonice park near Prague. The chairman of the Beatles fanclub, Jiri Svatek, visited Radio Prague on Thursday; before he told us about the new tribute, Mr Svatek explained why the Fab Four were so popular in 60s Czechoslovakia.

With the Czech Republic expecting to become a fully-fledged member of the European Union next May, one of the main topics of discussion among the country's academics has been the fear of a loss of Czech identity. Prague's Academia bookstore has just hosted a discussion forum at which respected historians and social scientists debated the importance and popularity of Czech national symbols today. One of the main speakers was historian and current deputy-prime minister Petr Mares:

Prime Ministers of the Visegrad Four - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - met at Dobris Chateau outside Prague on Wednesday, ahead of the inter-governmental conference (or IGC) on the future of Europe. The Visegrad Four are part of a much larger group of countries unhappy with the terms of the draft EU constitution to be discussed at the IGC, which gets underway in Rome on Saturday. The Visegrad Four agreed on a number of key demands they want to table in Rome, chief among them being the "one country, one commissioner" principle.

At a recent presentation of his new book in Prague, the "world's most famous hacker" Kevin Mitnick admitted that he did not know any Czech hackers. Obviously, that does not mean that there aren't any: Web Pirates, Lenin Alive, ExE, binary division, to name just a few.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in computers may at one time or another have heard of Kevin Mitnick - by all standards one of the most famous computer hackers in the world. After being hunted down by the F.B.I. he sent to several years in prison for computer fraud. The court that sentenced him ruled he was "dangerous when armed with a keyboard". A slogan he successfully markets today, even though he has reformed his ways.

Prime Ministers of the so-called "Visegrad Four" are meeting at a chateau outside Prague on Wednesday, for talks ahead of the inter-governmental conference (IGC) on the draft EU constitution. The V4 meeting, bringing together the premiers of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, is an attempt to co-ordinate the positions of the four Visegrad countries before the IGC gets underway in Rome. Rob Cameron reports.

This autumn, the Czech government started another national campaign aimed at combating xenophobia and racism. Very much like last year's campaign, Tolerance 2003 focuses on two areas - delivering free books on ethnic minorities to public libraries and promoting discussion among students on racial stereotypes. Under what's called the Tolerance Ride, ethnically mixed teams of foreigners, refugees, asylum seekers, the Roma - as well as members of the majority population - travel around the country to share their experiences, customs and cultures with