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As news emerges that the swine flu virus has hit Europe, with cases confirmed in both Britain and Spain, three Czechs remain under surveillance after displaying symptoms of illness upon return from Mexico. Prague’s Ruzyně Airport has implemented a system of medical-checks for passengers returning from Northern and Central America, while the government has urged Czechs to avoid all non-essential travel to the region.

One of the highlights of the Czech cultural calendar, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, gets underway in the west Bohemian spa town on July 3. While the list of special guests this year has not been completed, some names were revealed – along with the programme highlights – at a news conference in Prague on Tuesday morning. I spoke there to KVIFF’s programme director Julietta Sichel.

The winners of the European Inventor of the Year awards are due to be announced in a ceremony at Prague Castle on Tuesday evening, with 12 inventors nominated in four categories. The award is granted by the European Commission and European Patent Office, and aims to recognise the people who are pioneering solutions to today’s global challenges – a task that’s all the more difficult under the present economic circumstances. Rob Cameron has been speaking to two of the nominees: Bartolomej Janek from Slovakia, and Koen Meijer from the

With a caretaker government due to take over on May 8, there is growing concern as to how the Czech Republic will handle the remainder of its EU presidency. Can the country’s little-known and relatively inexperienced new prime minister Jan Fisher stand up to the pressure – or is this a chance for the country’s Eurosceptic president Václav Klaus to exert a far greater influence on EU affairs? Political analyst Jiří Pehe says the fears of what Mr. Klaus can do are greatly exaggerated.

A visit to the Czech Republic by David Duke - former leader of the white supremacist organisation the Ku Klux Klan – set off alarm bells last Friday among human rights organisations. Mr Duke had been set to give a number of lectures at undisclosed locations in the country at the behest of right-wing extremists. But in the end, he didn’t stay on Czech soil for long. On Friday, shortly after his arrival he was arrested, questioned by the police, and then ordered to leave the country.

If there were any doubts that the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU effectively ended when the country’s government fell last month, they were dispelled on Thursday, when only a handful of the bloc’s regional development ministers came to a Czech-hosted meeting. On top of that, the creator of a controversial sculpture in Brussels says he will remove it before the Czech presidency ends, in protest at the toppling of the government at such an important time.

The Cirkus totality (or Totalitarian Circus) was one of the cultural projects chosen to accompany the Czech Republic’s EU presidency. As part of the project, a new textbook about Central Europe’s communist past has been written, there will be a series of plays and performances staged, and a giant ‘communism timeline’ has been unveiled on Prague’s náměstí Republiky. I went along to have a look:

Thursday marked the end of an eight-day international film festival in Prague that will now be making its way around the country. The Days of European Film, now in its 16th year, presented more than 50 feature, documentary and short films from across the continent.

The Czech Republic’s Romany community is outraged by the recent arson attack on one of its members which left a two-year-old girl fighting for her life and rendered eight people homeless overnight. Several Romany organizations have called on the authorities to stand up to growing extremism in the country, and are planning a nationwide protest to step up public opposition to the neo-Nazi movement.

The International Monetary Fund has created a stir with a startlingly gloomy prediction for the Czech economy this year. The prestigious Washington-based institution says the Czech economy will shrink by 3.5 percent against a backdrop of a worldwide decline of 1.3 percent.