Current Affairs | All stories

The Czech national squad couldn't have gotten off to a better start in its debut at the World Cup. From the get-go on Monday the Czech performance was scintillating, and as Jan Velinger reports it didn't take long for the team to score the first goal in front of a sell-out crowd of more than 50,000.

Prague's City Court was due to begin the trial of two elderly men on Monday in connection with a murder case that goes back almost 50 years. The two men, Milan Michel and Stanislav Tomes, are accused of sending a letter bomb to a senior French politician, whose wife was killed by mistake. However the case was adjourned almost as soon as it started, due to the men's age and ill health.

It is exactly one week since general elections in the Czech Republic produced a stalemate, with the centre right and centre left blocks each winning 100 seats in the lower house. The first tentative negotiations on forming a new government indicate that- politically at least - Czechs are in for a long hot summer.

Leaders of the two biggest parties in parliament held their first official talks on Friday since the elections. The meeting, between Mirek Topolanek, leader of the Civic Democrats, who won the elections, and prime minister Jiri Paroubek, leader of the Social Democrats, who came second, marks the beginning of efforts towards finding a way out of the political stalemate that emerged after the polls produced a hung parliament.

The Prague district of Podskali is now an upmarket residential area. But until around a hundred years ago, Podskali, on the right bank of the Vltava River, was more of a village, inhabited by rafters, timber merchants and people connected with life on the river. Only a few buildings survived the sweeping wave of urban renewal of Prague at the turn of the 19th century - and with them an interesting club, founded exactly 135 years ago, which to this day maintains the traditions of the river people.

The Czech Republic often suffers from post-election stalemates, yet there has never been sufficient political will to change the election system from proportional to majority. So is there another way around the problem? The Green Party think there might well be; they have suggested changing the election law to give people over 16 voting rights, saying that an influx of young voters would not only shift the balance of forces but give the government a stronger mandate.

The Czech football star Tomas Ujfalusi is a tough defender who takes no prisoners on the pitch. But - inspired by his aid-worker cousin Robin Ujfalusi - Tomas has lent support to a project in which football is being used to help children on the streets of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The Czech Republic is set to take part in a European Union project under which surplus food from the EU is used to help feed the poor, after the outgoing Czech government approved the plan on Wednesday. However not everyone is in favour of the idea - both economists and Czech farmers have questioned the wisdom of this approach.

Your very own Czech Radio provided commentary for the 1934 World Cup final, as Czechoslovakia went 1:0 up through a goal by Antonin Puc. Czechoslovakia went on to lose that game - and also lost the only other final the country appeared in, in 1962. With the current Czech team in Germany on the eve of the 2006 finals, Michael Longaro looks back now at the country's history in the competition.

Governments around Europe have rejected the findings of the Swiss Senator Dick Marty in his report for the Council of Europe, which claims that 14 European countries colluded with the CIA on secret flights carrying terror suspects for interrogation. Senator Marty includes the Czech Republic on a list of countries which allegedly provided refuelling stopovers for the planes. The Czech authorities say as far they were concerned the flights were carrying US military personnel, and therefore they had no reason to intervene. But are they telling the