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The Czech Republic's civil service unions have announced that they are going on a one-hour strike in two week's time in protest at significant cuts to their thirteenth month's salary, a form of bonus. Employees - usually civil servants - receive a thirteenth month's salary just before Christmas, and if they are lucky enough to get a fourteenth month's salary it normally comes at the beginning of the summer.

The plight of some 50 North Korean seamstresses who are working legally in the Czech Republic but who are by all accounts being exploited by the embassy of the totalitarian North Korean state is now filling the front pages of all Czech dailies. Daniela Lazarova has been following the story and joins me now in the studio. Daniela what's the situation exactly?

The Charter 77 Foundation has launched an interesting new project called Making Chances Equal; it supports computer literacy in schools for blind students and children with locomotive disorders. Last week, the foundation provided such schools with 108 special computer appliances, including 23 Braille terminals used to convert computer writing into Braille. This allows blind students to read with their fingers what a sighted person can see on the screen.

While many European countries have been dealing with football violence for decades, in the Czech Republic it is a relatively recent phenomenon, one of the more unwelcome imports which followed the fall of the Communist system. Now legislators are preparing a new law to combat the problem. Jan Obst is the chairman of the Czech Football Association:

Hundreds of people went on one last shopping spree in the Czech Republic's duty free shops on Wednesday before they definitely closed down at midnight. By closing time the shelves with cigarettes and alcohol were bare.

April 1st marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the best known contemporary Czech novelist in the world, Milan Kundera. Rather surprisingly, the author - who has visited the country on only a couple of occasions since the Velvet Revolution - is less popular in the Czech Republic than he is elsewhere. But why isn't Kundera held in high regard in the country of his birth?

This week students all over the country have been holding a week of protests to highlight the dramatic lack of funding in the Czech Republic's higher education sector. This campaign, called "A Week of Unrest", includes public lectures as well as concerts and "happenings" as a way of attracting public attention to the problem. Organizers say it is the biggest student protest since the fall of communism.

After the communists came into power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, a small group of military-trained men formed a resistance group led by the brothers Josef and Ctirad Masin. The story of the Masin brothers and their fight for freedom is one of the great controversies of 20th century Czechoslovak history. Some deem the men heroes while others perceive them as criminals, as they took six lives while shooting their way to freedom through Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The man regarded as the "third brother" in the group is Milan Paumer and on Monday

Anyone who has had to wait in line for hours in public offices to sort out things like ID cards and tax returns could be forgiven for thinking that the Czech civil service is not exactly a well oiled machine. This perception has now been borne out by a recent survey, which has found that Czech public administrators are not as professional or motivated as their EU counterparts.

Czech young men can finally breathe a sigh of relief as Tuesday saw the last batch of conscripts begin their military service.