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A radical far-right group wants to march through Plzeň on Saturday to protest against alleged restrictions on freedom of speech in the Czech Republic. Two months after thousands of ordinary people took to the streets to block a similar march through Prague’s Jewish Quarter, the organizers of the Plzen march are calling on their supporters to turn up armed this time round.

This week, Prague citizens have the rare opportunity to take a close look at and even leaf through a priceless medieval illustrated Bible. Not the original manuscript, of course, but a life-size colour replica of the 14th-century Velislav Picture Bible. The book, containing selected passages from the Bible along with two legends about the Bohemian patron saints Ludmila and Wenceslas, is one of the largest medieval pictorial books made in Central Europe.

Less than a month before the Czech presidential election, incumbent Václav Klaus has received backing which could see him successfully clinch a second term. The boost came on Monday when the leadership of the Christian Democrats recommended its lawmakers support the incumbent rather than his rival, the US-based economist Jan Švejnar. The decision could tip the balance: if a majority of the party’s lawmakers follow through, their votes – together with those promised by the country’s ruling Civic Democrats – should be enough to secure Mr Klaus a

Doctors at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague have reason to celebrate. In December they performed the first-ever combined heart and lung transplant in the Czech Republic and their patient is now well on the road to recovery.

An unusual collection of over 3,000 archaeological items was discovered two years ago in a Prague apartment whose owner died in a fire. Archaeologists who have examined the collection say it contains some unique artefacts – with very little scientific value because vital information about their origin is missing. Experts complain that people with metal detectors who dig for treasures of the past are causing more harm than they might think.

Controversial Christian Democrat leader Jiří Čunek is still angling for a return to the cabinet, although Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek says he’ll have to iron out his differences with the Green Party first. Mr Čunek was forced out over an alleged corruption scandal, but the Greens also find his views on the Romany minority somewhat distasteful. So his latest remarks on integration are unlikely to curry favour with the Green Party leadership, although they may succeed in boosting his flagging approval ratings.

Who is Barbora Škrlová? The mysterious case of the Czech woman charged with identity fraud after posing as a 12-year old girl in the Czech Republic and a 13-year old boy in Norway has shocked and baffled the nation. Czech investigators are slowly piecing together the picture of her life and there are serious indications that she was a victim of a sect whose members made a profit from child-abuse films.

The southern Bohemian nuclear power plant Temelín has long been a thorn in the side of anti-nuclear activists. Its operator, the power utility ČEZ, insists that the Soviet-designed plant is perfectly safe and is now working to improve its image. It has launched an advertising campaign to attract visitors to its information centre, which seems to be bearing fruit, as Jana Gribbinová from the power plant explains:

It’s twenty years since a group of anti-communist dissidents took the brave decision to revive the newspaper Lidové Noviny, once the spiritual home of the Czech nation’s most eminent journalists and essayists. The dissidents were searching for a way of getting uncensored news and views to a wider audience. For two years, from January 1988 until December 1989, they distributed a monthly “samizdat” version of Lidové Noviny, until the paper was revived as a regular daily in January 1990. An archive of those samizdat editions has now been put

The club of modelers in the Moravian town of Vsetín goes back many years. Its members are exclusively men – in fact some of them claim that a woman would never have the patience to spend hundreds of hours gluing together tiny components in order to make a perfect replica of a plane, train or boat. Recently they had been producing and selling battery-powered airplane models that attracted kids from far and wide but they never dreamed that one day their hobby would lead them to make bigger and better things for Hollywood filmmakers.