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Tanks of live carp are currently to be seen on streets around the Czech Republic, with some Czechs taking the traditional Christmas food home alive and others having them butchered on the spot. Not everybody approves of the custom and animal rights activists have been staging dramatic protests against a practice they regard as extremely cruel.

Recently a Czech hotel owner published a call on his Facebook page in a bid to highlight the true meaning of Christmas – offering free stays at his mountain hotel over the festive period to those who couldn’t afford it otherwise. The reaction triggered by the novel gesture has been enormous.

The Czech government has approved a plan for the future role of the country’s military designed to reflect the new security climate across Europe. Thousands of new professional soldiers are to be recruited, and aging technologies replaced or updated.

Czech athlete Zuzana Hejnová, two-time world champion in the 400 metres hurdles, was named Czech Sportswoman of the Year in a gala presentation on Monday. Women have finished first in the competition for 10 years straight.

A ceremony was held on Monday at the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in the city Brno affirming the beatification of two Czech priests who were killed by the communist regime in the early 1950s. In a laborious process stretching back to 2004, priests Jan Bula and Václav Drbola could ultimately be declared saints by the Vatican.

Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka is attending the EU summit in Brussels not just for his country but also as the front man for the regional Visegrad Four grouping. But the Central European group has been showing some strains of late in reading from the same page.

Czechs on Friday are marking the fourth anniversary of the death of the country’s first post-communist president, Václav Havel. One thing that many people are doing in fond memory of Mr Havel is rolling up their pant legs – a reference to Havel’s inauguration, when he famously wore trousers which were too short.

A move to substantially boost the Czech army reserve has been passed in the lower house of parliament with the means also earmarked to make signing up for missions at home and now abroad more attractive to recruits.

Ahead of the two-day EU summit in Brussels, the Czech Republic’s top officials met for foreign policy consultations at Prague Castle. The talks outlined two main priorities that the Czech Republic wants to defend at the summit – the need to preserve the Schengen open space and the creation of a joint border and coast guard which would help control the flow of migrants to Europe.

A centre for research into the use of cannabis in medicine officially opened in Prague on Tuesday. The International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute has been created with the help of 500 million crown donations from the US and Canada and represents the biggest foreign investment in Czech medicine in recent years.