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President Vaclav Klaus and his wife Livia have just ended a four day official visit to Japan. The presidential couple had a packed agenda and did not break their pace even when the president's aircraft failed to take off on a planned flight from Tokyo to Hiroshima. Although the unexpected technical failure necessitated a last-minute change of plans - it did not detract from the overall success of the Japanese visit.

Prague's Ruzyne Airport was put on a high terrorism alert on Wednesday evening after the police received a warning from an unidentified psychic about an alleged terrorist attack. The woman claimed to have had a vision of shooting and bloodshed at Ruzyne although she had no idea when the attack would take place.

In the 1920s and 30s the actors Jiri Voskovec and Jan Werich became legendary for their bitingly satirical songs that parodied the politics of the time in the tense years leading up to the war. Their "Osvobozene divadlo" - or "Liberated Theatre" - is remembered and loved to this day. During the wartime occupation the two men escaped to America, but then their careers took very different directions. Werich returned home, and took roles in several well-known films of the 50s and 60s, while Voskovec decided to stay in the States. Against the odds

The dreaded StB secret police were disbanded on February 15 1990, less than three months after the start of the Velvet Revolution. But only now have the authorities come up with an adequate system of allowing the public access to StB files, in a new project called Open Past (Otevrena Minulost). But the Interior Ministry still has some way to go - of an estimated 17 km of files, only 3.5 percent has been thoroughly processed so far.

For many decades, lynxes, wolves and bears have been very rare in the Czech Republic. Over the last 20 years their numbers have been decreasing even more rapidly. One of the obvious reasons is disappearing habitat through the clearance of woodlands. However, these three wild species have to face one more serious problem: poachers. In the last 20 years, around 500 lynxes plus several wolves and bears have died at the hands of illegal hunters, who regard them as trophy kills.

Around 10 percent of people are left-handed. But it wasn't so long ago that those born left-handed were forced to write with their right hands. Life improved substantially for left-handed Czechs forty years ago, when the authorities abandoned this practice. Lenka Petakova reports - and meets a man who remembers the bad old days when left-handers were made to "overcome" their natural disposition.

The welfare of children in the world's most advanced states is the focus of an extensive report just released by the United Nations children's organisation UNICEF. It uses a wide range of factors from health, to poverty, to relations with family and peers to rate 21 countries; the Netherlands is judged to have the best child well-being, the UK the worst. The Czech Republic ranks 15th, though the news is certainly not all bad.

Enjoying a glass of chilled beer one would hardly think of the complex biochemical process that is beer production. The prime ingredients are malt, hops, water and also yeast which helps turn sugar into alcohol and also influences the flavour of the beer. There are many kinds of brewers' yeasts suitable for different types of fermentation. But few breweries can boast having used the same kind of yeast for over a century.

February 14th is St Valentine's Day, a holiday marked by lovers throughout many parts of the world. On the day, many send cards (as many as one billion by some estimates) while others opt for flowers or chocolates. But here in the Czech Republic, Valentine's Day is a much more recent phenomenon, and you may be surprised to learn that even now most Czechs mark another day as the day of love.

Recent days have seen a series of allegations of collaboration with the communist-era secret police. Less than 24 hours after the head of the Czech branch of Interpol was fired over his involvement with the StB, claims emerged that Jaromir Nohavica, one of the country's best loved singers, was an informer. Now - in the most serious case to date - former prime minister Josef Tosovsky has been accused of collaborating with the secret police.