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A new proposal by the Czech Health Minister Tomáš Julínek will see some Czech patients having to pay for ambulance trips. At present, such journeys are covered by health insurance, but if the changes are approved, come next January, patients may have to pay for ambulances the same way they pay for taxis.

Maintaining Georgia’s territorial integrity and helping the reconstruction of the country following the recent armed conflict with Russia: those are priorities outlined on Wednesday by the Czech government ahead of next week’s EU summit.

The United Kingdom was one of only three countries to open its doors to workers from the Czech Republic and other new member states when the EU enlarged in 2004. Since that time, an average of 3,000 Czechs have moved to the UK every three months. But, according to the British Home Office, that figure plummeted by nearly 50 percent in the second quarter of this year. The drop is being attributed to the strength of the crown, and changing trends in Czechs’ migration habits.

The Czech branch of the environmental organisation Friends of the Earth has filed a formal complaint with the European Union over logging practices just outside the Czech border in the southern Šumava region. They say that logging efforts both in Germany and Austria are threatening forests within the Czech Republic’s famous national park.

Dagmar Damková, the first woman to referee at the highest level in Czech men’s football, recently reached another career milestone, when she officiated in the women’s football final at the Beijing Olympics. The USA beat Brazil 1:0 in that game, and though the ref herself obviously wasn’t up for a medal, her performance was highly praised by Olympic officials. Dagmar Damková described the experience of refereeing the final:

Last week saw the premiere of ‘Máj’ (or ‘May’), a film version of an iconic romantic poem written by one of the greatest Czech poets, Karel Hynek Mácha. The film director, František A. Brabec, already has experience of adapting poetry to screen: his previous film ‘Kytice’ was an adaptation of another 19th century literary classic, an anthology of ballads by Karel Jaromír Erben. So, how did the filmmaker succeed in transforming a lyrical epic of love and death into a movie? Ruth Fraňková has more.

The Beijing Olympics were generally regarded as one of the most spectacular in recent times, and were praised by the president of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge as ‘truly exceptional’. But were they perhaps a bit too spectacular – raising the bar so high that cities with more modest bids, such as Prague, can never hope to succeed?

Sixty-three percent of children in the Czech Republic are happy, according to a survey of 9- to 17-year-olds carried out this year on behalf of the Czech branch of the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF. The last study of its kind seven years ago also suggested that two thirds of Czech children were happy. But in some other areas things appear to have changed, the director of the Czech branch of UNICEF, Pavla Gomba, told me at the launch of the new report.

Ever feel like a relaxing massage? Well, you’re not the only one; the number of people visiting Czech spas has risen in the first six months of this year by 5.5 percent. And according to the Czech Association of Travel Agents, more visitors than ever are going for a weekend of pampering, instead of a longer, curative stay. To find out more, I spoke to Klára Nydlová, a manager at the Richmond Hotel in one of the country’s largest spa towns, Karlovy Vary. I started by asking whether guest numbers at her hotel reflected the new statistics:

It started as a dispute over the distribution of tax revenues. It ended up as a rather interesting sociological experiment. Mayors of small towns and villages have long complained that far too much tax-payers’ money ends up in the capital Prague, and far too little ends up in their own municipalities. So to see how the other half lives, the mayor of Prague and the mayor of Suchá Loz – a village in southeast Moravia – are swapping jobs.