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The new nationwide school-leaving exams concluded this week at around 1,300 secondary schools around the Czech Republic. According to overall results issued by the Czech Education Ministry on Thursday, Prague’s private PORG grammar school came in at the top of the national top ten charts, followed by other schools in the capital. Nearly 20 percent of students failed the exams, and will have to retake them in September.

The Czech Republic has once again come under fire for failing to adequately protect child rights. In its latest report the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child criticized the high number of institutionalized children in the country saying the authorities had done little to resolve this chronic problem. It also recommended that the country close its network of baby boxes –safe and anonymous hospital facilities for leaving unwanted children - which it claims violate several provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Prague on Thursday for a brief working visit. Mr Cameron met with the Czech head of government, Petr Nečas, to discuss their countries’ positions on a planned new bailout for Greece, ahead of a key EU summit in Brussels. Both leaders agreed that the planned rescue package should be put together by members of the eurozone, rather than the whole of the EU.

The Czech Supreme Court cancelled on Wednesday a 37-year-old verdict of a communist court which sent four young writers to jail for defamation of the Soviet Union and public disturbance. The four men, who spent up to a year in prison, got into trouble in the summer of 1973 in a Prague pub – when they sang an old song with slightly innovated lyrics.

The Czech Parliament has approved the first stage of the government’s health care reform. The three-party coalition, which has a majority in the lower house, pushed the bill through despite opposition from the back-benches that it will create a socially unjust, two-tier health system. The Social Democrats’ shadow health minister David Rath announced that his party would do everything it could to prevent the new legislation from being implemented – including taking it to court. Health care expert Dr. Martin Stránský speaks about whether these criticisms

Duke Special is a songwriter and performer from Belfast whose style is influenced by vaudeville and theater. Having opened for the likes of Van Morrison and Snow Patrol, he is known for putting on a captivating live performance – often using unusual instruments such as old gramophones or transistor radios. Duke Special’s four-concert tour of the Czech Republic kicks off Tuesday night at Prague’s Malostranská Beseda. We caught up with him ahead of his show, the second time he will be performing here, and started out by asking if he had any special

A report by the Czech Helsinki Committee, a respected human rights NGO, on Monday again highlighted the sorry state of Czech prisons. Their overcrowding continues to rise, which in turn deteriorates the living conditions for the inmates. The authorities believe – as they did a decade ago – that alternative punishment would help. But the system of alternative punishments has been inefficient and now supplies more convicts to the country’s prison houses.

On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Treaty was officially dissolved and 36 years of Czechoslovakia’s military alliance with the USSR came to an end. As a consequence, Soviet troops stationed in the country during the 1968 invasion were gradually withdrawn – an anniversary that the Czech NGO Opona is celebrating with a series of events entitled Week of Freedom, starting Monday. Sarah Borufka spoke to David Gaydečka, one of the organizers of Freedom Week about the events planned.

Politicians and union leaders are still arguing about the significance and the impact of Thursday’s transportation strike. But in Prague, where nearly all municipal transport came to a standstill, the strike had one unexpected effect – many more people than usual got on their bikes and rode to work. Pro-cycling activists now hope that this could be a defining moment, with Thursday’s necessity eventually becoming the city’s everyday virtue.

After months of negotiations between the government and trade unions, and countless demonstrations against government reform measures, the long-feared nationwide transport strike has arrived. On Wednesday representatives on both sides continued to seek a last-minute agreement that might save the country from what is a very infrequent occurrence here – the closure of the rail, bus and municipal transit services. Despite the looming threat, both the government and the unions appeared almost unwilling to budge even hours before the strike began. Christian