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Two months after the country's inconclusive general elections negotiations on a new government are back to square one. A centre right coalition between the Civic Democrats, Christian Democrats and Greens was pronounced dead on Friday for lack of support and President Klaus urged the leaders of the two strongest parties on the right and left - the Civic and Social Democrats - to find an alternative solution that would end the drawn-out stalemate.

For some months now there has been speculation about the United States building a new missile base somewhere in Central Europe. Initially analysts tipped Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as key candidate countries for the base. Hungary now appears to be out of the running and it would seem the chances of a base being built here are increasing - on Sunday the Czech foreign minister, Cyril Svoboda, said it was almost certain Prague would play some part in the project. Richard Krpac, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, explains the latest

About 40 children born in the Czech Republic have been adopted into families beyond this country's borders each year since 2000. But now, after the death of a Czech-born child entrusted to the care of a family in Sweden, international adoptions have been temporarily halted until the procedures undergo a review. Petr Sedlak, from the Brno-based Office for the International Legal Protection of Children, explains the history of international adoptions of Czech children.

Exactly 700 years have passed since the last male member of the Bohemian royal dynasty, the Premyslids, died. On August 4, 1306, king Wenceslas III. was murdered in the town of Olomouc at the age of just 16. The death of the young king marked the end of a 450-year Premyslid rule in Bohemia.

The weather may have taken a downturn in Prague to drizzling rain but one place they're hoping will hold out for beautiful conditions is Wilber, Nebraska, USA. This Friday will see the start of the town's annual Czech Festival, expected to draw thousands of visitors. For more than forty years the festival has celebrated the Czech heritage, showing off traditional folk costumes, polka music, and of course offering an opportunity for visitors to enjoy Czech cooking and beer. Earlier, Jan Velinger spoke to the festival's spokesman, John Fiala, on a

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.

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.

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".