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The tick season here in the Czech Republic only starts in spring but the campaign against the tick-borne encephalitis has already been launched, urging people to get vaccinated on time. However, ticks also transmit another disease – Lyme disease – which can seriously harm people’s health, especially joints and the nervous system, if untreated, and no vaccine has been available so far. However, this may be about to change. A Moravian company Bioveta in cooperation with Palacký University in Olomouc has just completed the development of a vaccine

On February 8th the two houses of Parliament will convene to elect a new head of state and the days leading up to the vote are marked by increased tension on the Czech political scene as deputies and senators make up their minds who they are going to support – the current president Václav Klaus or his sole rival, Czech-American economics professor Jan Švejnar. Moreover political parties are now caught up in a heated debate as to whether the vote should take place by secret ballot or by the open raising of hands.

The 2008/2009 National Hockey League season will open in Prague and Stockholm next October. While the Swedish capital will see two games between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators, hockey fans in Prague are in for a one-off treat. Jaromír Jágr, the most brilliant Czech star in the NHL and the captain of the New York Rangers, will lead his team in two matches against Tampa Bay at Prague’s Sazka Arena.

There’s a rather unusual film festival underway at Prague’s Ořechovka cinema at the moment. Called “The Magic Eights”, it examines the strange significance of the number "8" in modern Czech history. The festival features around a dozen films either made in or about the crucial moments in this country’s recent past, most of which occurred in a year ending in "8".

On Thursday, Prague’s Barrandov film studios celebrated their 75th birthday. Over the past three-quarters of a century, the studios have housed over 2,500 film shoots. It all started with the thriller ‘Vrazda v Ostrovni ulici’ (Murder on Ostrovni Street) – the first Czech film to combine dialogue with music. In more recent years, international blockbusters like the James Bond film Casino Royale have been shot on location in Barrandov’s hallowed halls. To mark its anniversary, I spoke to Norbert Auerbach, former head of Hollywood studio United Artists,

After last year achieving considerable success with silver at the European Figure Skating Championships, the Czech Republic’s Tomáš Verner has gone all the way this time out – on Thursday he won the country’s first men’s gold medal in the competition in 16 years.

On Wednesday, the European Commission made public its planned reforms in its fight against climate change. The proposed measures are aimed to help the EU slash greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020, as well as to increase reliance on green energy. Under the measures the Czech Republic, for example, will have to more than double energy production from renewable sources.

They’ve been talking about it for almost two decades but finally an agreement seems to have been reached. On Wednesday, the government and representatives of the country’s 17 legally-recognised religious communities signed a treaty on compensation for property seized by the communist regime. The bill must now be approved by parliament, where it faces a lively debate.

An agreement between the Czech Republic and the United States on the deployment of a tracking radar on Czech territory, part of an American anti-missile defence system, could soon be concluded. A Pentagon spokesperson said on Tuesday that a final deal could be struck within weeks. Czech officials have been more careful to set a date: the Foreign Ministry expects negotiations with the US to be finalized before a NATO summit in Bucharest in early April.

It’s the kind of thing your parents or grandparents recommended you did when you suffered a cold as a child: to gargle with salt water. But it turns out that recommendation made a lot sense. The latest research – a study in the Czech Republic – has confirmed that plain old sea water can be effective, indeed more effective, than regular medicines in treating children’s colds.