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Chanan Rozen, who is in his late 80s, was the oldest person honoured last week at the Czech Foreign Ministry's annual Gratias Agit awards for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic around the world. For sixty years, Mr Rozen has been working to further relations between his native Czechoslovakia and Israel, where he has lived almost all his life.

Prague's Municipal Court reopened a controversial post-war court case on Monday when it overturned a 60-year-old verdict against one of the founders of the Bata shoe empire. In 1947, a judge sentenced Jan Antonin Bata - half-brother of the company's original founder Tomas Bata - to fifteen years' imprisonment for failing to support the anti-Nazi resistance, a charge his family has always vehemently denied.

The Romany hip hop group Gipsy.cz have gradually built up a following here in the Czech Republic, with their unusual mix of rap and traditional gipsy music and lyrics in Czech, English and Romani. But the band, led by Radoslav (Gipsy) Banga, have set their sights higher: on international success. Their most recent album reached the European World Music Top Ten, and at the weekend Gipsy.cz notched up another career milestone when they played at perhaps the world's greatest music festival, England's Glastonbury.

Against all the odds, leaders of the European Union emerged from the weekend's summit with an agreement to draw up a new treaty to govern the 27-member bloc. The "reform treaty", as it is to be called, will replace the moribund EU constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Czech leaders have hailed what they see as the death and burial of the constitution as a great success, but the new document encapsulates many if not most of the constitution's original features. So was the summit really a triumph for the Czech Republic? We spoke

Tens of thousands of trade union members took to the streets of Prague on Saturday to protest against the government's planned reform package. The crowd gathered in Prague's Zizkov district and marched to the city's Wenceslas Square, where it declared to the public that the reforms will benefit the rich and harm the middle and lower income classes. Dita Asiedu looks at the workers' reservations and asks whether they are founded:

Inhabitants of the little village of Tisova have been pushed to the limit in the last few days. Just hours after a local farm reported that its flock was dying from a bird flu virus, tests confirmed that the strain of bird flu in question was the H5N1 strain that can be deadly to humans. Now, not only the flock on the affected farm but all poultry in the entire village have to be culled.

Few would argue that the extraordinary technological leaps and bounds of recent years have improved our lives, but they've also allowed employers unprecedented power to spy on their employees. Whether it's the surveillance camera in the corner of the shop or your boss reading your personal emails, Big Brother might very well be watching you. But unjustified spying on your employees without their consent is actually illegal in the Czech Republic, and doing so is now more difficult following an amendment to the Labour Code. We discussed the problem

Czech veterinary officials have confirmed the country's first outbreak of bird flu among poultry, after the disease was uncovered at a turkey farm in eastern Bohemia. Until now bird flu had been found only in a number of cases in wild birds in southern parts of the country. Authorities, who ordered a safety perimeter instated around the farm in eastern Bohemia, confirmed on Thursday following tests that the flu strain is indeed the deadly H5N1.

The first Czechs began settling in Texas in the 1850s and within five decades there were around 250 Czech communities in the state. Today one of the organisations keeping the community's traditions alive is the Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Centre. This week John Polasek, a member of its board of directors, was in Prague on behalf of the centre to receive an award from the Czech Foreign Ministry. He told me about its activities.

One of the oldest and most popular folklore festivals in Europe kicked off at Straznice in southern Moravia on Thursday. With over 15,000 visitors every year, Czech folk bands, singers and dancers, consider it the 'Mecca' of all folklore festivals. Over 2,000 participants from the Czech Republic and abroad will perform during 31 events. The festival comes to a close this Sunday.