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The Czech Republic joined the European Union in May 2004, in what was the biggest single enlargement in the alliance's history. Little under a year earlier, in June 2003, 77 percent voted for accession in a referendum. Today, three years after joining the EU, how satisfied are Czechs with membership? That was one of the many questions posed in a comprehensive, twice-annual national survey conducted as part of Eurobarometer and released last week.

This Wednesday, deputies in the lower house of Parliament will hold a no-confidence vote in the coalition government. The vote was called by the opposition Social Democrats who are dissatisfied with the way the government is dealing with accusations of corruption against its Deputy Prime Minister Jiri Cunek. But the chances of the opposition gaining enough votes to topple the ruling coalition are minimal, leaving the obvious question of why the vote has been called in the first place.

Czechs fear that in a few years they will face great trouble finding a dentist. Currently there are about 1500 patients per one dentist, which puts the Czech Republic somewhere in the average within the European Union. However, the prognosis looks dim for future years. The age map of Czech dentists clearly shows that a strong majority of them are between 50 and 54. Czech medical schools, however, do not produce enough graduates to replace the soon to be retired specialists.

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 marked a revolution in the world of medicine. Once fatal illnesses became easily curable and the mortality rate dropped the world over. Today doctors depend on antibiotics to treat a wide range of bacteria-related illnesses from the common ear-infection to meningitis. But gradually the effectiveness of antibiotics has begun to wane and there have been cases of patients dying because even the strongest available antibiotics failed to work.

According to official estimates there are now around 40,000 Vietnamese living in the Czech Republic. Many of these immigrants first came to this country in the Communist era, when Vietnam sought to bolster its skilled workforce by sending thousands of students and guest workers to socialist Czechoslovakia for training and experience. When the Iron Curtain disappeared, a large number of the Vietnamese here decided to stay rather than return to communist Vietnam.

It was extremely windy down by the Vltava last week when around a hundred Czech doctors gathered for a rather unusual protest - a trip on an open-topped boat normally used for tourist excursions. The doctors headed in the direction of Hamburg on what was a short, symbolic voyage. The reason: they wanted to highlight the dangers posed by Czech doctors leaving to work abroad, and to draw attention to the fact that many who stay at home are doing huge amounts of overtime.

A recent industrial dispute at carmaker Skoda Auto - one of the Czech Republic's largest and most successful firms - has not only made headline news in this country, but also taken up many column inches in the international press. A pay rise of just under 13 percent, which Skoda workers managed to negotiate with their employer, has led to speculation abroad that the Czech Republic may be about to price itself out of the foreign investment market.

Scientific evidence that climate change is caused by human activity has boosted ongoing efforts to address the problem. Now the focus is primarily on what will happen after 2012 when the validity of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty designed to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, expires. Last week representatives of the EU, the World Bank and the new EU member states met in Prague to discuss the challenges ahead.

The Czech coalition government last week unveiled a package of ambitious tax reforms and spending cuts. The cabinet says their reform, aiming to reduce the country's fiscal deficit and prepare it for euro adoption in 2012, comes at the eleventh hour. They say that under current legislation, mandatory expenditures would exceed state budget revenues in two years' time.

Refundable Bottles by Jan Sverak recently set a Czech record when it was watched by 107,000 people in its opening weekend. Most if not all of those viewers would have seen the film at a multiplex cinema; figures just released show that multiplexes now have 75 percent of the cinemas market, up from 40 percent in 2002. What does that mean for the present and future of cinema in this country?