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Over a hundred students from medical schools all over the world are in the Czech capital at the moment; they're here to attend Prague Selective, a broad study programme which is now in its tenth year. The course is organised by Dr. Martin Stransky, who himself studied medicine in the US and runs a health care clinic in Prague.

Crocodiles are no longer something you need to go to the zoo to see here in the Czech Republic. Several Czech farmers have started to rear these animals, along with some less tropical, but equally untraditional, species like snails. Rosie Johnston has the story on all these creatures great and small...

A heat wave coming all the way from Africa arrived in the Czech Republic at the weekend, with Prague seeing a new record temperature of 35.8 degrees Celsius on Sunday. But Czechs are now bracing themselves for even hotter weather: forecasters say Monday could be the hottest day ever recorded in this country, with temperatures of up to 39 degrees Celsius expected.

The Council of Europe has raised serious concerns about the use of castration for sex offenders in the Czech Republic, following a visit by the Council's experts to a number of psychiatric facilities. The Council's Committee for the Prevention of Torture has called for greater safeguards to prevent the treatment being wrongly applied.

Close to fifty Czech cultural figures, scientists and musicians on Thursday signed a petition asking President Vaclav Klaus and the chairmen of both houses of Parliament to support their demand for a referendum to be held on whether the Czech Republic should host a US radar base on its territory. Their public appeal has pleased the Social Democrats and Communists, who are also pushing for a referendum, but the Czech government maintains that questions of defense are not a matter to be decided by the public.

On this day, July 13, lovers of fine art are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Vaclav, or Wenceslaus, Hollar, one of the most famous Czech and European engravers and draftsmen of his time. The year 2007 has actually seen two important anniversaries: in March it was exactly 330 years since the great artist's death.

Eagle-eyed film-goers will have noticed the medieval streets and facades of Prague and other Czech towns cropping up in Hollywood blockbusters such as Mission Impossible and Casino Royale. Experienced and highly-qualified Czech crews as well as Prague's renowned Barrandov studios have proved a winning formula for Hollywood over the last decade, but now, the Czech film production business is sounding the alarm. In 2003, they say, foreign filmmakers spent more than five billion crowns in the Czech Republic. Last year, that figure had fallen to 1.4

Soldiers and fire-fighters have begun destroying thousands of chickens at two poultry farms in East Bohemia, after tests confirmed the presence of the H5N1 type of bird flu virus. The two cases were within a few kilometres of the country's first outbreaks in June of last year at two similar farms.

It all started with a can of soup. Two years ago a Czech tourist trekking through the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile decided to take a break for lunch and warm a can of soup on a camp-fire. The result was a four-day blaze that destroyed over 11,000 hectares of Chile's national park. Experts said it would take more than 7 million US dollars and over a decade to repair the damage.

The rainy days of July seem to be full of sunshine for the Social Democrats, the largest opposition party in the Czech parliament. A recent series of polls suggests that for the first time since last year's elections, Social Democrats now have more public support than their main rival - the governing right-wing Civic Democrats. But that's not all the good news for the Jiri Paroubek's party - an investigation into a corruption scandal linked to the Social Democrats has just been dropped.