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The planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in March made headline news in the Czech Republic, sparking a great deal of media comment. Radio Prague asked former Washington-based journalist Daniel Anýž for his take on the planned meeting.

The White House press department has confirmed that the Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on March 7th. It will be the first visit by a Czech head of government in eight years.

Thursday is the first anniversary of the shocking murder of Ján Kuciak, a young Slovak journalist who was gunned down with his fiancé. One year on rallies in the couple’s honour are being held in Slovakia and Prague, while a new investigative journalism centre in Bratislava has been named after Kuciak. But have perceptions of reporters changed in this part of the world?

The centre of Prague could soon boast its own version of Covent Garden as an expensive reconstruction project on a marketplace located just off Wenceslas Square is set to begin later this year. Prague City Hall says the target is to create a cultural and commercial hub in the spirit of other western capitals.

A Czech non-profit organisation based in Brno has developed a special mobile phone application for drug users and people living on the streets. Called Čára or Line, it will help them find accommodation, food or free needle exchange. The app, reported to be the first of its kind in Europe, has just been launched for a trial run.

More than sixty years after its premiere, a unique Czech documentary from Tibet, made in the early 1950s, returns to Czech cinemas on Tuesday. Called Cesta vede do Tibetu or the Road leads to Tibet, the film had won several awards before being banned by the Communist authorities. Today it brings a unique testimony of places that have long been destroyed by the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is currently on an official visit to Israel, meeting with his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu and has high hopes for strengthening what he says is a “strategic partnership”. I asked Irena Kalhousová, an expert on Czech-Israeli relations from the London School of Economics, what makes the relationship special.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has been re-elected chairman of the ANO party that he founded seven years ago, running unopposed at the party’s congress on Sunday. Polls show Mr. Babiš remains the most popular, trusted politician in parliament, and ANO would win general elections if held today. So, what direction is he looking to take the party – and the country?

The Czech Big Brother awards, recognizing the biggest privacy intruders of 2018, have gone to Facebook, the Czech Financial Administration and the company iRobot, producing intelligent vacuum cleaners. In the Czech Republic the awards have been presented since 2005 by the Iuridicum remedium civic association.

The great traveller Miroslav Zikmund turned 100 on Thursday. For Czechoslovaks unable to travel much under communism, the books and radio reports produced by Zikmund and his friend Jiří Hanzelka served as a window to exotic parts of the world. However, the pair were barred from public life following the Soviet invasion.