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President Xi Jinping’s visit to the Czech Republic continued on Tuesday with the signing of a new strategic partnership treaty and meetings with top officials. While the visit is being viewed as a success for Chinese-Czech relations, human rights activists have raised their voices in protest at the servility shown to the Chinese leader.

Business is the overwhelming theme of the Chinese president’s trip the Czech Republic. For supporters of the warmer relations between Prague and Beijing, the payoff will be Chinese investment, industrial, research, educational cooperation and jobs. For the doubters, the price in curbing criticism of China is high and they are skeptical about the returns.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the Czech Republic on a two-day state visit that aims to symbolize a restart in relations between the two countries. His lavish reception in Prague has evoked mixed reactions with some officials hailing the visit as the beginning of a new era in business relations and others interpreting it as a betrayal of human rights and democratic values.

Embattled Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babiš faced a special session of the lower house on Wednesday to explain the circumstances surrounding EU funding for his Stork’s Nest farm and conference centre. The minister heard accusations of fraud and unethical conduct and his one-and-a-half hour address failed to convince opposition deputies. At the end of the stormy session the ruling coalition, which is trying to ride out the storm, pushed through a motion to postpone further debate until the outcome of an EU investigation on the matter.

Czech police will be out in force over the Easter holidays, monitoring traffic on the country’s major highways but also minor roads. The aim is prevent drinking and driving over a period when tragic road accidents, sadly, have only gone up.

Czech officials across the political spectrum have condemned the terrorist attacks against innocent civilians in Brussels on Tuesday which left more than 30 people dead and at least 200 wounded. In their reactions to the attacks, the politicians stressed the need for coordinated action on the part of the EU and said it was crucial not to be intimidated by terror.

The devastation of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, which left more than 30 civilians dead and 200 injured, has begun to sink in. At the same time many have been left wondering what should be done next, namely to prevent similar such attacks from being repeated.

Tensions are running high in the Czech ruling coalition over a proposed conflict of interests bill which would ban government officials from business and media ownership. The bill is widely seen as targeting ANO leader, billionaire businessman and Finance Minister Andrej Babiš. His party has closed ranks around Mr. Babiš, warning its coalition partners that support for the bill could topple the ruling coalition.

Researchers from Masaryk University in Brno recently recorded unique evidence of how some cancer cells cooperate to create a new cell highly resistant to chemotherapy. Until now, it was thought that when one cell entered the other, it was cannibalised. Researchers in Brno found in many cases the opposite was true; the cell which entered was the more active. Above all, the new joined cell combined qualities of both, while growing more resistant to treatment. It could be one reason why cancer thought to be defeated in a patient latently survives to

The Slav Epic is the monumental work of Czech painter Alfons Mucha in which he traces the history of the Slav peoples. But over the years the fate of the 20 massive canvasses, which Mucha regarded as his lifetime achievement, has also turned into something of a saga between the descendants of the painter and the City of Prague. And the latent tension between them has just taken a new twist.