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The first draft of the new Czech government's policy agenda — leaked to the press this week — has been criticized by economists and political analysts for promising something to everyone at a time when Prague has committed to reining in the spiralling state budget deficit.

Over the last couple of days we've seen one of the first signs of autumn here in Prague, as swifts have started gathering for their annual migration to the south. But for how much longer will this annual ritual continue? The common swift has been chosen this year by the Czech Ornithological Society to be the subject of its annual Bird of the Year campaign to heighten a growing threat to the swift's traditional habitats.

The Czech edition of The Life of Jesus, a satirical comic book created by Austrian humorist Gerhard Haderer, is continuing to draw controversy in the Czech Republic, at least among more conservative Catholics.

"The most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010": That's what the European Union aspires to become in its ambitious Lisbon strategy launched four years ago. The Czech Republic signed up to the scheme even before joining the EU, and Czech politicians often speak about the country's transformation into a knowledge economy.

Police are still searching for the man who carried out an assassination attempt on an Israeli casino owner in the centre of Prague, just over a week ago. Their investigation has led detectives to the Old Town's Liliova Street, where the assailant is believed to have been based, and close-circuit video recordings from there are being examined. The attack was reportedly part of an ongoing feud between Israeli crime gangs. As investigations continue, attention has turned to the whole issue of casinos in the Czech Republic, of which there are unusually

Mountain-climbing is an extremely popular sport in the Czech Republic, but it brings plenty of dangers, as a number of gruesome headlines have shown in the last few days. Five Czechs died under an avalanche high on a mountainside in Kyrgyzstan, while another Czech was killed after a ten-meter fall in the Slovak High Tatras. In a bleak statistic he became the tenth Czech fatality in the Tatras since the beginning of the year. One of the Czech Republic's best known mountaineers Zdenek Hruby explains why these accidents happen so often.

The former hard-line Communist Party official Karel Hoffman on Monday began serving out a four-year prison term for his role in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Mr Hoffmann, head of telecommunications at that time, was found guilty of "sabotage" for having ordered the country's medium-wave transmitter to stop official radio broadcasts condemning the invasion.

Musician Petr Janda, who leads the legendary (and long-running) Czech rock band Olympic, has announced he is going to run for the Senate. He is by no means the first Czech show business personality to go into politics since the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Non Plus Ultras is a new Czech film that hit cinemas here this week providing a new look at a phenomenon not often examined here: the phenomenon of football hooliganism. Focusing on several characters' daily lives that revolve around one's favourite team, beer, women, and all things English, Ultras, however, is far from a scathing look at the underbelly of the football world one might expect. Instead, it is a character study - at times a comic and even gentle one at that - of a small group of friends, who, while hooligans, are really only minor players

Figures have been released this week showing that the number of foreigners residing in the Czech Republic legally has almost doubled in the past ten years. They now make up 2.3 percent of the country's population, but that number is still incomparably lower than that in other EU member states.