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The Defence Ministry announced on Monday that the Czech Republic would withdraw most of its troops from Iraq next year, and at the same time the country's presence in Afghanistan would be substantially increased. The redeployments, which still have to be approved by parliament, will come into effect in July 2008.

Information Technology is already huge business in the Czech Republic - and it looks set to get even bigger. According to a recent study, some 700 new IT companies are expected to appear in the country over the next four years, potentially increasing jobs in the field by almost a third. There is only one slight problem: it seems that there aren't enough qualified Czech employees to make use of them.

Prague City Hall has seen a setback in its efforts to prevent a group of neo-Nazis from marching through Prague's Jewish Quarter on 10 November, the anniversary of the largest anti-Jewish pogrom in the Third Reich. The Prague Municipal Court has just cancelled a City Hall ban on the controversial planned march; however, officials are still hoping to block the far-right demonstration.

Great Czech inventions include everything from the contact lens to lager beer and now...the beer vending machine. Following a successful six-month trial, the world famous brewer Pilsner Urquell has just announced that it is introducing more of its new pivoautomaty - machines which dispense cans of beer, just like soft drinks machines elsewhere. With the network of machines expanding - potentially even abroad - the 'smart' beer vending machine, which reads customers' ID cards and only sells to the over 18s, could be coming soon to a station or stadium

The Civic Democrats, the biggest party in the Czech government, have decided to have the freshly agreed European Union reform treaty examined by the Czech Constitutional Court; they want to make sure it does not conflict with the country's constitution. What's more, there are different views among the Civic Democrats as to whether a referendum should be held to ratify the treaty in the Czech Republic.

This Tuesday sees the opening of the 11th Jihlava film festival. The festival in the small town where Bohemia meets Moravia is one of the biggest of its kind in central and eastern Europe. Dedicated to screening fresh new documentary films, it aims to provide an alternative outlet to more popular cinemas and to Czech television, where such films are rarely shown.

This weekend, in an unexpected move, Russia granted People in Need, one of the Czech Republic's biggest NGOs, the right to operate once again on Russian soil. This is after a two-and-a-half year ban from the country, imposed on the grounds that People in Need were, according to the Russian Administration, funding terrorist groups. People in Need's work in Russia has traditionally been in the south of the country, in the breakaway regions of Chechnya and Ingushetia. The organization now plans to take up where it left off, providing training and

The chairman of the opposition Communist Party, Vojtech Filip, is under fire from his political opponents after meeting senior Belarussian officials during a private visit to the country. Mr Filip's critics on the political right say the meetings could be interpreted as legitimising the Lukashenko regime and send confused messages in the light of official Czech government support for Belarussian dissidents. He's defended the visit, saying he did nothing wrong.

Love it or hate it, the US coffeehouse chain Starbucks is everywhere - except Prague, that is, which up until now has been remarkably quiet on the coffee-to-go front. But this absence of Starbucks is not going to last that much longer, with the chain opening its first branch in Prague's Pankrac district next year. Starbucks is known for its blend of hot drinks, cool jazz, and comfy leather sofas - but will Czechs buy it? This is the question I put to Prague Post Food Critic Dave Faries, earlier today:

The find of the century is what Czech archaeologists are calling the discovery of a 7000 year-old statue in Masovice, a village just west of Znojmo, South Moravia. Although only the lower parts of the sculpture have been found, experts say that Hedvika, as the statue has been named by those who discovered it, is a unique find in a European context.