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Since 1994, the Czech Interior Ministry and NGO People in Need have been working to repatriate Kazakhstan's ethnic Czechs. So far, over 700 have been brought back to the Czech Republic. This week, the Czech Interior Ministry upped the pace, asking for more money to carry out the repatriations, and promising to have the remaining 170 expats home by October. So far, so good - 57 of the final 170 touched down at Prague's Ruzyne airport on Thursday. Rosie Johnston has the story:

'Strc prst skrz krk' means 'stick you finger through your throat', and is one of the harder Czech phrases to get one's mouth around. This chronic lack of vowels, combined with a difficult case-system, gives Czech its reputation as a fiendish language to learn. But now foreigners wanting to live here on a long-term basis are going to have to take the bull by the horns and learn the language if they are to succeed. The Czech government is proposing to introduce a language test for people applying for permanent residency.

A happy-looking mother and baby are all over Thursday's newspapers here in the Czech Republic. But they aren't just any mother and child; the new mum is MP Lucie Talmanova, while the babe in her arms is the son of the prime minister, Mirek Topolanek. On Wednesday the Civic Democrat leader announced he would seek a divorce. This may not be so easy, though, as his wife has so far refused to give her consent.

Surveys in recent years have suggested that the use of soft drugs in particular is relatively common in the Czech Republic. Various measures have been taken to combat the trend, including an unusual system of testing that has been introduced at a school in the South Bohemia region. It is not the pupils themselves that are being tested, but the surfaces, such as desks, with which they come into contact.

In April the statue of Jan Hus dominating the Old Town Square was surrounded by scaffolding and covered up in large canvas to undergo vast renovation, which will take at least two years. In the meantime, tourists visiting the site will only see a huge advertisement in its place. This week the media reported that the scaffolding was causing damage to the statue: rust from the wire mesh, which holds the ad in place, has been dripping down, leaving orange stains on the stone.

Tuesday evening at Prague's international airport more than 200 Czech tourists who had geared up for package vacations abroad were given the bad news: their holiday was over before it had even begun. The development came after travel agency I'm Travelling failed to pay for one flight, while a second was cancelled by the unpaid carrier, Travel Service, outright.

In early 2006 the Prague Public Transit Company (Dopravni Podnik) added 12 slinky new trams designed by Porsche to its fleet. Though Czech stalwart Skoda still made the trams in its Pilsen factory, this was the first time it had handed over the design to somebody else. As such, there was a great deal of anticipation. But since their introduction the trams have created a mixed reaction here in Prague, and now the Public Transit Company is to make changes to the 12 existing trams. Jan Svoboda is a spokesperson for the Public Transit Company, he explains

There are still more than seventeen months to go before the Czech Republic takes over the helm of the European Union, but feverish preparations are already underway and they could see the country's top EU diplomat coming home five months early. The move has been criticised by the opposition, which accuses the centre-right government of playing politics.

Relations between the Czech state and the country's biggest bank - CSOB - seem to be going from bad to worse. The Finance Ministry has announced it's suing CSOB for almost 27 billion crowns (1.3 billion dollars), in retaliation for CSOB's own 1.7 billion crown lawsuit against the Czech state. The tit-for-tat lawsuits are the result of a dispute over the terms of the handover of the collapsed IPB bank to CSOB in 2000.

In the early 1990s, when western tourists started flowing into the country after the fall of communism, some local establishments came up with their own method of leveling the difference between Czech and foreign income. They started charging foreigners more than Czechs. Seventeen years later, the phenomenon of dual prices has not vanished in the Czech Republic and is apparently even used in local politics.