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Some two and a half months after calls for curbing corruption changed the Czech political landscape, the Interior Ministry unveiled its anti-corruption strategy. But the long-awaited plan has been coldly received both in and out of the coalition, and the NGO watchdog Transparency International has even quit the ministry’s anti-corruption panel.

Stalled Czech road and rail projects have been given the green light to continue by the transport minister after construction companies offered savings and other concessions. But with the country still not out of the tunnel as regards spending cuts, the minister has other plans to build on.

Weeks after other political parties announced their candidates for Prague mayor in the upcoming municipal elections, the Civic Democrats have finally made public their own choice: sixty-six-year-old Bohuslav Svoboda, a former head of the Czech Medical Chamber. The Prague Civic Democrats are hoping Mr Svoboda – no stranger in the public eye - will help turn their fortunes around after they did poorly in Prague in the national election earlier this year. But, many observers say, they’ll face a tough battle.

A breakthrough in nanotechnology is on the horizon and it is being led by Czech scientists. A project called Nanoprogres is bringing together 16 companies and research institutions to create a commercial device that would put nanofibres to a range of medical uses: creating and renewing cell tissue and healing wounds such as burns or damaged ligaments. Earlier today I spoke with the head of the department of tissue engineering at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Evžen Amler, to find out more.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg has just been to NATO’s Brussels headquarters bearing mixed news about the government’s intentions. On the one hand it wants to quickly downsize its contribution to the ongoing peace mission in Kosovo, but on the other it is offering a bigger presence in Afghanistan.

Once the shining stars of the 1960s Czechoslovak pop scene, singers Helena Vondráčková and Marta Kubišová have turned into bitter foes over thwarted plans for a comeback of their former band, the Golden Kids. Ms Vondráčková accused her colleague of breaking a contract, and demanded more than a million crowns in compensation. A Prague court has dismissed the claim, but the war may not be over.

The new environment minister, Pavel Drobil, went to the Šumava National Park at the weekend to get a firsthand look at a problem that has literally plagued the forest for decades – the damage caused by bark beetle infestations. After viewing some of the worst-affected areas he declared the current strategy of leaving nature to clean up after itself untenable, to the dissatisfaction of environmental groups and others, who fear increased logging.

Around five percent of Czech school-goers are diagnosed with dyslexia. Although it has been proven that there is no direct link between dyslexia and IQ dyslexic children are often labeled slow and problematic, hampering them from making full use of their potential. A new learning aid just out aims to change that.

What do Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler and Ferdinand Porsche have in common? Most of us would assume that these well-known personalities were all born in Germany or Austria, but all of them, in fact, started life in what is now the Czech Republic. You won't find that much written about them in Czech schoolbooks however - they're not really regarded by Czechs as ' one of us'. But a new exhibition in Prague is trying to change that.

Historians at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes have announced they recently uncovered previously unknown video footage in the archives on the events of 1989. Footage shot – and heavily manipulated - by the former regime’s secret police, the StB. Carefully presented images and a propagandistic voice-over in the “documentary” were meant to give a diametrically different picture of public demonstrations which shook the country 21 years ago, suggesting they were a provocation and a sham. Swiftly overcome by events, though, the Communists