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The Czech Republic will bring back home state-owned artworks that are on loan abroad in an effort to avoid their seizure in a protracted arbitration case. The decision comes after an Austrian court last week upheld the claims of the Swiss firm Diag Human and seized three modernist artworks lent to a gallery in Vienna. The Czech Foreign Ministry considers any seizures of Czech property in breach of international law.

A drawn-out legal dispute between blood plasma technologies and production company Diag Human and the Czech state has taken a dramatic turn. Last week the company, which claims it is owed close to ten billion crowns by the Czech state for damaging Diag Human’s interests, successfully applied to an Austrian court to order the seizure of famous Czech artworks on display in Vienna. Just days after two paintings and a sculpture from the National Gallery and the Moravian Gallery were impounded by court bailiffs, a Paris court has recognized a similar

The Czech government has come up with a new proposal for the restitution of church property confiscated after the communist coup of 1948. Under the new draft, Czech churches and religious groups would get back around 60 percent of the property seized by the state while the rest would be paid in cash. Representatives of Czech churches have welcomed the move but said a detailed analysis was needed before taking a definite stand on the issue.

The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority on Monday ordered a nation-wide inspection of fresh vegetables. The decision comes after more than a hundred Spanish cucumbers possibly contaminated with a deadly mutated E. coli bacterium went on sale in several health food outlets in the country. Czech authorities are implementing the checks after vegetables with the infectious bacteria killed ten consumers in neighboring Germany.

Prague is currently hosting the thirteenth annual Khamoro festival – a celebration of Roma culture coupled with serious debate about conditions for the Roma minority. Gypsy musicians from as far afield as Hungary, India, France and Norway feature at this year’s festival, which began with a re-enactment of a traditional Romani wedding.

After weeks of debate the European Union on Wednesday agreed on the criteria for conducting "stress tests" on the bloc's 143 nuclear power plants. The tests which aim to avert an accident like that at Japan's Fukushima plant, will check nuclear plants’ preparedness in dealing with natural disasters such as earthquakes and flooding, as well as for man-made failures such as airplane crashes and explosions. We called Petr Brandejs, deputy head of the Czech Institute for Nuclear Safety to find out how the Czech Republic’s two nuclear power plants –Temelín

Playing the game “what would have happened” with the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion can yield a million answers, one of which might be that Czechoslovaks would have been zooming around in sleek, little Czech-made sports cars. The UVMV 1100 GT unlike anything that had been driven before in the country when it was designed in 1968, but production was cancelled by the Communist Party after the invasion. Now, 41 years later, the UVMV might finally be coming to life.

Google will continue expanding its Street View application in the Czech Republic after it agreed to meet several conditions required by the country’s data privacy watchdog. These include lowering the height of Street View cameras as well as a promise to swiftly deal with privacy complaints from the public. The US internet company, which has already made most of Prague and several other Czech cities available in Street View, said they would resume the project in the coming months.

The Czech Football Association has given Slavia Prague a new lease on life, issuing the club a licence on Tuesday to play in the top flight next year. The club, with more than a 100-year history, was in danger of being relegated to the lowly third division over unpaid debts and a lack of ownership transparency. Now the most outstanding questions have been answered and the club will return next season.

Public Affairs chairman Radek John has been re-elected to his post following an online vote by party members. Mr John received almost 1,200 votes via the internet while the head of the party’s parliamentary club, Karolína Peake, came in a close second. In many ways, the online election has left a lot to be desired as surprisingly only some 40 percent of eligible supporters took part.