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Saturday was International Women's Day, an event celebrated around the world every year. The Association for Equal Opportunities chose the eve of International Women's Day to launch a nationwide campaign which will try and inform Czech women about the pros and cons of European Union membership. After the fall of communism, International Women's Day fell into disregard in this country, so I asked Michaela Marksova-Tominova, the deputy chairwoman of the Association for Equal Opportunities, whether the choice of the date was deliberate.

During the communist period, Czechs did not have much choice when it came to deciding where to go on a foreign holiday. They could travel relatively easily to their "brotherly" communist states in Eastern Europe, but it was much more difficult to get the authorities' permission for travel to the West. So, if a Czech wanted to spend some time by the sea, they would most likely to do so in East Germany or Poland by the Baltic Sea, by Hungary's Lake Balaton, or in the Black Sea resorts of Bulgaria, Romania or the Soviet Union. And if they were lucky,

However distant summer may seem in the bleak days of February, many people have already started planning their summer holidays. And as I found out at last week's huge travel fair in Prague, Czech travel agents, hotels and tour guides are busy preparing for all those foreign tourists that may want to spend their vacation in the Czech Republic.

In this week's edition of Talking point we take a look at the Czech Republic and the Arab world. As we will see, relations between the two regions have changed dramatically since the days of communism. Today, the Czech Republic and the Arab world enjoy a much more casual relationship then in the past - the continual development of diplomatic, trade, and cultural links are just a few of the defining characteristics of the changing times.

The Czech Republic is one of ten front-runner candidates for EU membership hoping to take part in the elections to the European Parliament as a fully-fledged member in 2004. However, one of the areas where the candidate countries, including the Czech Republic, need to catch up on most is the environment. This involves including some three hundred EU environmental laws into national legislation as well as implementing and enforcing these laws, putting them into practice and making sure that they are respected.

It was not so long ago that citizens of Czechoslovakia were risking imprisonment and in many cases their lives trying to leave the country for the West. It is impossible to count all those who fled Czechoslovakia during the forty-one years between the communist takeover in February 1948 and the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. The lowest verifiable number is 170,938, but the estimates are much higher - unofficial statistics suggest anything between 250,000 to half a million. Czechs and Slovaks emigrated to the West in two main waves: after the

For many decades Czech women have been used to giving birth in maternity hospitals, in an environment they have often perceived as cold, impersonal and unfriendly. In recent years more and more women have been choosing to travel many kilometres in order to deliver their babies in small hospitals known for their friendly and individual approach to mothers and babies, or to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife.

There are thousands of homeless people especially in big cities around the Czech Republic. Homelessness and the problems related to it are still a relatively new phenomenon in this country but the cities, charities and NGOs have been learning fast and are trying to help to reduce the risks and harm for both the homeless and the rest of the society. Radio Prague looks at two projects currently underway in Prague which are trying to offer the homeless something more than food and a bed.

Yes, everybody's talking about the presidential election. Or are they not? The press reports on it daily and Czech television stations even go as far as visiting the official presidential candidates in their own homes to introduce them to the public. But has that been enough to get the average Czech interested? It seems not.

Less than a month after the Czech Republic hosted a historic NATO summit - which invited seven former Eastern Bloc nations to join in a landmark expansion, the country took part in another important conference, this time in the Danish capital Copenhagen. The European Union extended invitations to ten mostly ex-communist candidate countries after completing tough negotiations which followed years of preparations on both parts.