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The US Vice-President, Joe Biden, met with Czech officials in Prague on Friday on the third leg of his Eastern European tour intended to test the ground for the region’s participation in a new US missile defence plan. At a news conference following the talks, Mr Biden and Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said the Czech Republic was ready to get involved in the revamped project.

The Office for Personal Data Protection says it has never encountered such a large-scale database of illegally collected personal data: information from 200,000 drug prescriptions a day for the last six months showing who uses what kind of medicine. And the body collecting it? The State Institute for Drug Control.

Wednesday afternoon saw roughly one hundred right-wing extremists protest in front of the Office of the Government, in reaction to a carefully-planned crackdown by police earlier in the day. Officers moved in in the early hours of Wednesday morning to arrest almost 30 individuals across the country suspected of ties to extremist and neo-Nazi groups.

US Vice-President Joe Biden is coming to Prague, the third leg of his Eastern European tour. Some five weeks after the Obama administration shelved plans to build elements of missile defence in the Czech Republic and Poland, Mr Biden is expected to dispel concerns that the United States has pushed the region to the periphery of its interest. The head of Political Science Institute of Prague’s Charles University, Bořivoj Hnízdo, says any reassurance Mr Biden can give the Czech Republic will be very important.

In last month’s opinion poll the interim government of Jan Fischer received unusually positive feedback from the public compared to previous cabinets. Carried out by the STEM polling agency just four months after the cabinet was appointed, the poll suggests that 44 percent of Czechs trust the government, with the prime minister himself enjoying as much as 83 percent of public support. Radio Prague spoke to the head of STEM, Jan Hartl, and asked him first what was behind those figures.

Less than a week after Ivan Hašek stepped down as manager of the Czech international football team his successor has been announced. Michal Bílek, hitherto Hašek’s assistant, has been given a three-year contract and a clear task: rebuild the Czech squad and lead them to Euro 2012. But does the 44-year-old have what it takes?

The caretaker government of Prime Minister Jan Fischer – originally set up for a brief five-month period – is now set to rule the country until regular general elections scheduled for May 2010. On Wednesday, Mr Fischer addressed the lower house of the Czech Parliament, and outlined his cabinet’s major priorities for the coming months.

Mum behind the wheel of a truck, while dad stays at home to look after the children. While this concept might seem completely normal to most kids, Czech children may still find the idea shocking, at least according to the European Contact Group, a non-profit organization that promotes equal opportunities for men and women. Within a broader effort to break that stereotype they have produced special work sheets to help teachers in kindergartens and primary schools address the issue.

The law faculty at Plzeň university has found itself at the centre of a huge scandal lately, after it emerged that law degrees had been awarded to students after only a few months of study, while dozens of dissertations had disappeared from its library. Is this evident corruption confined to Plzeň? That’s what the Czech Education Ministry is trying to find out with an audit – of every graduate of every Czech university since the year 2000.

The 2009 American comedy “The Brothers Bloom” is out now in the Czech Republic with the unmistakeable skyline of Prague Castle – which gets blown up in the film – immediately catching every Czech’s eye. For years, the country’s stunning locations and skilled crews attracted international filmmakers but foreign productions have recently abandoned the Czech Republic for countries offering better financial conditions to filmmakers. Now the Czech government has approved an incentives programme to revive the Czech film industry which has reached its