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This month, the first lesbian publishing house opened in the Czech Republic. LePress has a portfolio of two titles so far, both translations from American originals. The aim of the publishers is to introduce Czech lesbians to the sort of lesbian fiction that is being written overseas. The woman behind the project is Marketa Navratilova. She told Radio Prague where the idea came from:

When the famous Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal wrote about the Nymburk brewery in his novel “Cutting It Short”, he probably didn’t expect that one day its beer would make it as far as the Caribbean. Now, beer from Nymburk is also heading for another market. One of its products, which recently received a kosher certificate, will now be sold in Israel.

New proposals put forward by the European Commission aimed at reforming the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) have met with opposition by Czech representatives, including the country’s Agrarian Chamber and the Agriculture Ministry. The EU is trying to slash millions in annual subsidies which would leave the largest agrarian businesses hardest hit. Under the proposals, large farms in the EU - including the Czech Republic – could lose up to 45 percent of previous funds.

Czech humanitarian organizations as well as the Czech Foreign Ministry have decided to send aid to Bangladesh. The country was hit by a disastrous cyclone last Thursday, which has claimed more than 3,000 lives so far. The Czech office of the Adra humanitarian organisation has already launched a fund-raising campaign to help the devastated region. I asked its coordinator Radek Spinka whether they have their own representative in the afflicted area.

The recent strong appreciation of the crown against the euro has resulted in growing internal pressure on the Czech government to set an early target date for euro adoption. After having to revise plans to join the Euro-zone in 2010, the Finance Ministry has spoken of the year 2012 as a soft-target date. However during a televised debate on Sunday the PM said the country must now look beyond 2012 to a time when it had successfully implemented heath and pension reforms. With neighbouring Slovakia looking set to join the euro-zone in 2009 it seems

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and Justice Minister Jiri Pospisil unveiled ambitious plans to overhaul the Czech Republic’s inefficient and painfully slow justice system on Monday. The plans – ranging from allowing people to communicate by email to reshuffling the way courts are staffed and run – are set to be introduced gradually over the next two years.

On Saturday Czechs marked the 18th anniversary of the country’s return to freedom and democracy. How have people’s lives changed since the heady days of the Velvet Revolution and are they happy with the changes? A poll conducted by the independent STEM agency indicates that the post-revolution euphoria has long worn off. Only 51 percent of respondents said they were fully satisfied with the country’s post-89 development. The rest expressed numerous reservations. We spoke with STEMs director Jan Hartl to get the big picture.

Robbie Williams vs. Liam Gallagher, Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera; high-profile fall-outs are pretty common in the world of pop music. But perhaps less so on the folk music scene. But the bust-up between Czech folk singers Jaromir Nohavica and Jaroslav Hutka has just become even bigger. Last week, Mr Hutka, who lived for ten years in exile in the Netherlands, having been forced out of communist Czechoslovakia in 1978, laid into fellow singer-songwriter Jaromir Nohavica for his collaboration with the secret police at the end of the 1980s.

Jan Antonin Bata was a man of mixed fortune: a man of wealth and influence who stood at the head a shoe empire, but also a man forced to flee his homeland where he was labeled a Nazi collaborator and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But now, more than four decades after his death, the Czech judiciary has cleared his name.

More and more Czechs are abandoning large cities to enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside, suggests a new survey by the Czech Statistical Office. Central Bohemia has become by far the most popular region, with more than 62 % of all moves taking place there. However, Czechs don’t travel too far from the cities, so that they can still enjoy the advantages of modern civilization.