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This week Prague's famous Barrandov film studios opened a brand new soundstage that is reportedly the most ambitious investment by the studio in decades. Named "Max" for its massive size, the new stage was built to attract bigger international productions to Prague.

Numerous newspapers and magazines serve the Czech community in the United States, from "nationwide" publications such as Americke listy to regional titles like Czech Nebraska. There are also several internet websites and email newsletters, such as the weekly Dumpling News; it is produced by Zora Pergl, a woman of Czech descent based in Florida. I asked her how Dumpling News has been received since its launch in April last year.

The Czech Statistical Office has just released a new report on the number of foreign citizens living in the Czech Republic. Its most recent figures show there are over 300,000 foreign nationals with permanent residence in this country. At the end of last year, they accounted for some 2.5 percent of the overall population. Although compared to other EU countries the share is relatively small, it keeps growing steadily.

Prague's Gender Studies Center is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Founded in the heady ideological tumult following the Velvet Revolution, the group has grown into a major advocacy organization for women and sexual minorities.

This Saturday, leading artists gathered at Prague's State Opera to receive and present the Cesky Slavik - Czech Nightingale - music awards. The event was hosted by celebrity radio presenters Milos Pokorny and Roman Ondracek. Among the winners: thirteen year old Ewa Farna from Ostrava, who was voted best newcomer of the year. Dita Asiedu has more on who got what:

The Christian Democratic Party has a new leader. He is the controversial mayor of Vsetin, Senator Jiri Cunek - a man whom some see as a racist and others as a pragmatic, down to earth politician who could bring the Christian Democrats out of a rut. But who is Jiri Cunek and can he really turn around the party's fortunes?

The American Center in Prague has a new home: the Wratislavsky Palace in Prague's Mala Strana district. The Center is the cultural and educational arm of the US Embassy, and has had many addresses over the years. The new location, embassy staff hope, will be the Center's home for many years to come.

Students from a secondary school in Prague where almost all the pupils come from the Roma minority recited poetry, sang and even performed a jazz improvisation at a Prague cafe on Thursday evening. This was all to celebrate the presentation of a new set of annual literary awards, named after the academic Milena Hubschmannova, who until her death last year had devoted many years to supporting Romany writing and culture. The competition received several dozen entries, and there was only one condition: they had to be written in the Romani language,

When the mayor of Vsetin Jiri Cunek evicted several hundred Romany rent-defaulters from their homes and moved them to a complex of portacabins on the outskirts of town several weeks ago he set off a storm of controversy. Some called him a racist, others applauded his courage in addressing a long-standing problem. On Thursday the Senate's Human Rights Commission set out to investigate the matter - and concluded that the mayor had made the right decision.

One thing missing so far from this Christmas season is proper Christmas weather: snowy conditions and temperatures well below zero degrees Celsius. So far this month, the mercury has stubbornly stayed well above freezing, for instance, daily it has been around 11 degrees Celsius). That has some skiers suffering - with very few runs at any ski hills operating. Still, it's too early to get too worried yet: as Jan Velinger reports, operators are confident things will soon take a turn for the better.