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The Committee of the Regions of Europe is meeting in Prague this Friday for what is the largest-scale event of the Czech Republic’s EU presidency. To accompany the conference, a festival promoting the food and drink of various European regions is taking place on Prague’s Wenceslas Square. ‘Ochutnejte Evropu’ offers passers-by tasters of French wine, Belgian beer and a musical programme as well. Rosie Johnston was at the opening:

Recent statistics revealed that every tenth inhabitant in the Czech capital is a foreigner. Ever since the fall of communism, the English-speaking community has been one of the strongest parts of the city’s cosmopolitan culture. This week, Christian Falvey visited the Prague Playwriting Contest, which has become a staple event of that community’s cultural calendar.

The Czech authorities recently launched a scheme to send home workers from non-EU states who lose their jobs. But members of the country’s sizable Vietnamese community say that measure is too heavy-handed. Vietnamese leaders told Interior Ministry officials this week they could support one another until the job situation improves again. However, the ministry has rejected these proposals. The head of the ministry’s asylum and migration department, Tomáš Haišman, explains why.

An unlikely war of words has erupted between the editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Právo newspaper and the opposition Social Democrats. Editor-in-chief Zdeněk Porybný claimed in an editorial published in Právo this week that he had received repeated warnings that if he continued to publish critical articles about the Social Democrats, he would see advertisers from the state sector begin to desert him.

An article appearing on Tuesday in the New York Times has caused something of a stir in the Czech Republic. Citing US government officials, the paper reported that US President Barack Obama has offered to trade a proposed missile defence system in exchange for Russian assistance in blocking Iran’s nuclear capability. He reportedly did so in a private letter to Russian president Dimitry Medvedev.

The Supreme Administrative Court on Wednesday rejected a petition by the Czech government to ban the far-right Workers’ Party. The court said the cabinet had not provided sufficient evidence that the small extremist group - which first made headlines last year when its supporters staged a march on a Romany ghetto - posed a real threat to democracy. The verdict was applauded by the party, but probably by few others. The Czech government will now have to bring more proof to support its position, or come up with different ways of dealing with right-wing

Many in the Czech medical profession were unpleasantly surprised by recent comments by the head of the Czech doctors’ association Milan Kubek. Speaking before a parliamentary committee on problems in health care, the head of the association, suggested that work done by female doctors was incomparable to that done by their male counterparts. His words have since led to growing criticism and calls for him to step down.

Barack Obama doesn’t arrive in Prague until April 4th, but an “advance team” of advisors are already here to scout out locations for what the Czech prime minister Mirek Topolánek says will be Mr Obama’s “European speech of the year.” Quite what he’ll say in it remains to be seen, with fresh questions raised this week over the future of the planned U.S. missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland.

We are now one third of the way through the Czech Republic’s six-month rotating presidency of the EU. Between the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the gas supply dispute between Russia and Ukraine, the presidency got off to a dramatic start, while the global financial crisis remains the major issue of the day. But how has Prague actually been handling the presidency so far? That’s a question I put to Petr Drulák of the Institute for International Relations.

While the Czech Republic continues to ponder the threat of recession, the country’s tourist industry and its attendant services have taken a nosedive. One of the areas in no doubt of hard financial times is the restaurant industry, which has found itself faced with spiralling numbers of patrons, particularly in Prague.