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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.

Every year, as many as ten thousand children go missing in the Czech Republic. Although most are found, many aren’t and the country still lacks an effective monitoring system that would prevent them from ending up on the streets or becoming victims of abuse. On Tuesday, members of the Missing Children Europe organisation met in the Czech capital; they discussed the establishment of a network of national centres that would exchange information on missing children at the European level.

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.

Stock markets around the world fell sharply on Monday amid fears of a looming recession in the United States. The Prague Stock Exchange was no exception. The PX’s main index ended trading down 4.62 percent at 1,489.6 points, its lowest closing figure for the last 15 months. The markets still appeared jittery on Tuesday, as nervous traders waited for Wall Street to reopen. So why does what happens 6,500 kilometres away in the United States have such an effect on the economic pulse of markets far, far away such as the Czech Republic? That’s a question

The former Czech president Václav Havel was admitted to hospital over the weekend with chronic bronchitis and a heart problem. Although his private secretary was quick to reassure the public that his condition was not serious and that Mr. Havel simply needed to get some rest, latest reports suggest that the popular former head of state may need more intensive treatment.

The bird populations of many European states could change drastically by the end of this century, warns a freshly released study entitled “A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds”. In fact, global warming could cause the average European bird species to move over 500 km north-east. Here in the Czech Republic, swans for instance could become a real rarity by the year 2100, while hundreds of bird species currently centred on the Mediterranean could begin appearing in this part of the world. I discussed the implications of the new report with

An unprecedented case in Czech criminal history, which shocked the public last year, has finally come to court. Petr Zelenka, a 31-year old male nurse who worked in a hospital in eastern Bohemia’s Havlíčkův Brod, stands accused of murdering seven patients and attempting to kill at least ten others by injecting them with heparin, a blood-thinning drug which can be fatal if administered in excess.

Two soldiers from the Czech contingent in Basra, southern Iraq, were wounded after a rocket hit their section of the Basra air base early Sunday morning. The soldiers only suffered light injuries caused by shards of glass shattered by the blast. This is the second time the Czech section of the Basra air base was hit by insurgent fire since last April.

On Monday evening, Prague plays host to the second annual ‘Night of the Open Churches’ festival. The programme offers out-of-hours prayer services and concerts to Prague’s devout, and just plain curious, citizens. A number of the city’s churches, from right across the Christian spectrum, are taking part in the event. Zuzana Dvořáková is the organiser of the festival; she outlines what is on the programme: