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The Czech Police force has decided to recruit members of three minority groups. If everything goes according to plan, more Roma, Vietnamese and Ukrainians could join the force as early as next year. Dita Asiedu reports:

Without a doubt, football's biggest, most glamorous and exciting club event is the UEFA Champions League. The lucrative competition features many of the game's greatest stars, and is watched by millions around the globe. This season the likes of Barcelona, Chelsea and Bayern Munich could be joined by the tiny Czech club Mlada Boleslav: they've just reached the final qualifying round and are possibly just 180 minutes away from the big time - and big money.

Late on Tuesday, the Slovak Minister of Defense, Frantisek Kasicky, made an announcement concerning the Czech Republic. Thirteen years after Czechoslovakia split apart peacefully, the Slovak government wants to secure a transfer of secret police files dating from the communist era back to Bratislava.

Since the early 1970s the rare Przewalski horse of the Mongolian steppes - a stocky, shorter-legged relative of the domestic horse - was classified as "extinct in the wild". Named after Russian geographer and explorer General Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky, who first confirmed its existence in the mid-1800s, the Przewalski horse survived in captivity. One place where the horse survived was at Prague Zoo, which has been breeding it since the 1930s. Now the zoo is involved in a project to return the animal to the wild.

"A friend I once lived with had a fever and couldn't go to work for three days. Our boss said 'Ukrainians do not have fevers'. That must mean that we are machines," a quote from 39 year old Ilja from Ukraine. Ilja is just one of the 50 or so non-EU Eastern Europeans who was interviewed by the Multicultural Centre in Prague as part of a study to determine how first generation immigrants, who have been living in the Czech Republic since the 1990s are faring on the Czech labour market.

This Wednesday marks two months since the Czechs went to the polls to vote on the country's next government - an election won by the right-of-centre opposition Civic Democrats - but an election that ended in stalemate across the political spectrum. In the days following the result, outgoing Social Democrat Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek promised that his political opponents would not be able to so much as "wash their hands" without Social Democrat approval and, so far at least, he has kept his promise to a "t".

One of the most precious works of art to be seen in the Czech Republic is no doubt "The Feast of the Rose Garlands" by the German painter Albrecht Duerer. Exactly 500 years have passed since the masterpiece was painted in Venice and to mark the anniversary, Prague's National Gallery is holding an exhibition this summer, displaying the painting, along with other works by Duerer and many tributes to the original masterpiece.

You might get the impression that the great Czech ice hockey goaltender Dominik Hasek never wants to hang up his skates. Six months after his 41st birthday, the Pardubice born player has just signed a new, one-year contract with Detroit Red Wings, a club close to his heart.

It has been a month since new road traffic and safety legislation was introduced in the Czech Republic and the results have been dramatic. The new system - based on stiff penalties and a points system - has led to a halving of the number of road deaths in July compared to the same month last year.

100 years ago to the day, the first astronomical observation was carried out in the Ondrejov Observatory southeast of Prague. Only a modest establishment at the beginning, it has grown into the largest scientific observatory in the country. Since 1953, it has been part of the Astronomical Institute of the Czechoslovak (Czech) Academy of Sciences and it also houses the largest telescope in the Czech Republic as well as Central Europe.