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Less than a month before the Czech presidential election, incumbent Václav Klaus has received backing which could see him successfully clinch a second term. The boost came on Monday when the leadership of the Christian Democrats recommended its lawmakers support the incumbent rather than his rival, the US-based economist Jan Švejnar. The decision could tip the balance: if a majority of the party’s lawmakers follow through, their votes – together with those promised by the country’s ruling Civic Democrats – should be enough to secure Mr Klaus a

An unusual collection of over 3,000 archaeological items was discovered two years ago in a Prague apartment whose owner died in a fire. Archaeologists who have examined the collection say it contains some unique artefacts – with very little scientific value because vital information about their origin is missing. Experts complain that people with metal detectors who dig for treasures of the past are causing more harm than they might think.

Doctors at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague have reason to celebrate. In December they performed the first-ever combined heart and lung transplant in the Czech Republic and their patient is now well on the road to recovery.

Who is Barbora Škrlová? The mysterious case of the Czech woman charged with identity fraud after posing as a 12-year old girl in the Czech Republic and a 13-year old boy in Norway has shocked and baffled the nation. Czech investigators are slowly piecing together the picture of her life and there are serious indications that she was a victim of a sect whose members made a profit from child-abuse films.

Controversial Christian Democrat leader Jiří Čunek is still angling for a return to the cabinet, although Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek says he’ll have to iron out his differences with the Green Party first. Mr Čunek was forced out over an alleged corruption scandal, but the Greens also find his views on the Romany minority somewhat distasteful. So his latest remarks on integration are unlikely to curry favour with the Green Party leadership, although they may succeed in boosting his flagging approval ratings.

The southern Bohemian nuclear power plant Temelín has long been a thorn in the side of anti-nuclear activists. Its operator, the power utility ČEZ, insists that the Soviet-designed plant is perfectly safe and is now working to improve its image. It has launched an advertising campaign to attract visitors to its information centre, which seems to be bearing fruit, as Jana Gribbinová from the power plant explains:

The club of modelers in the Moravian town of Vsetín goes back many years. Its members are exclusively men – in fact some of them claim that a woman would never have the patience to spend hundreds of hours gluing together tiny components in order to make a perfect replica of a plane, train or boat. Recently they had been producing and selling battery-powered airplane models that attracted kids from far and wide but they never dreamed that one day their hobby would lead them to make bigger and better things for Hollywood filmmakers.

It’s twenty years since a group of anti-communist dissidents took the brave decision to revive the newspaper Lidové Noviny, once the spiritual home of the Czech nation’s most eminent journalists and essayists. The dissidents were searching for a way of getting uncensored news and views to a wider audience. For two years, from January 1988 until December 1989, they distributed a monthly “samizdat” version of Lidové Noviny, until the paper was revived as a regular daily in January 1990. An archive of those samizdat editions has now been put

It’s not the first place you might imagine a record-launch, but on Thursday evening, the Czech Embassy in London played host to the band British Sea Power - and provided a venue for the launch of their new single, Waving Flags. Before the concert on Thursday, I called the band’s lead singer, Scott Wilkinson, to ask about his choice of venue:

Poland’s new prime minister Donald Tusk arrived in Prague on Thursday for talks with his Czech counterpart Mirek Topolanek, and top of the agenda was the planned U.S. missile defence shield. Washington wants to build a launching pad for ten interceptor missiles in Poland, to work in tandem with an early warning radar system across the border in the Czech Republic. But Mr Tusk is not as fervently pro-American as his predecessor Jaroslaw Kacynski, and Prague and Warsaw are beginning to look slightly out of step on missile defence.