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A team of firefighters assist with a surgical operation in hospital, President Klaus gets a cake to celebrate six years in office, and a Czech thief cuts the skin off his fingertips to prevent the police identifying his fingerprints – in vain. Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarová.

Czechs are reputed to be one of Europe’s most atheist nations. Yet in the course of its history, the nation has produced many outstanding religious thinkers, philosophers, writers and other personalities who left their mark on the development of theology and religion. In this edition of One on One, we talk to one of the country’s leading Catholic intellectuals, Martin C. Putna, a literary historian, specializing in Czech Catholic literature, who has recently become the head of the Václav Havel library. He recently hosted a popular TV show which

In more business news, Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has said that he plans to lower the rate of VAT that consumers pay in restaurants and pubs from 19 to nine percent. The financial daily Hospodářské noviny reported on Wednesday that Mr Kalousek decided upon the move following consultation with the NERV council, which was established to advise the government how best to weather the current global financial crisis. Mr Kalousek said that the move was not in order to make food cheaper for consumers, but for publicans and restaurateurs to make larger profits, so that lay-offs would not be made necessary. The move will still have to be debated in Brussels before it can come into effect.

Sour rye soup from the Giant Mountains, the south Bohemian štrachanda or rump steak goulash from Prague, these are just some of the Czech specialties, that will appear on the menus of Czech restaurants as of April. Czech Tourism, in cooperation with the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants and the Association of Cooks and Confectioners, have prepared a special project with the aim of promoting the Czech Republic through regional specialties. These dishes will appear on menus under the label ‘Czech Specials’.

There was a marked increase in the number of producers of organic food in the Czech Republic in 2008, according to figures presented in the January edition of the monthly Bio Obchod. Whereas at the end of 2007 there were just over 250 organic food producers in the country, at the end of last year that number had risen to over 400. There was also a 27-percent increase in the number of shops selling organic foodstuffs, and the Czech Republic’s two biggest bakeries started producing organic breads in 2008.

Czech dogs discover tail-wagging beer! Who makes the best dumplings in the country? And, "Goebbels' snout" is on display in Prague – within an exhibition of vintage radios, phonographs and telephones. Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarova.

The winner of this year’s Grand restaurant poll, compiled by food critic Pavel Maurer, is Prague’s Alcron restaurant. The results were announced in the daily Hospodářské noviny on Tuesday. Alcron, on Prague’s Štěpánská Street, rose eight places to first in this year’s list, with the restaurant’s new chef Roman Paulus taking most of the credit for the overall victory. Last year’s winner, Prague’s U Lípy restaurant, ranked outside of the top ten in this year’s poll. According to Hospodářské noviny, the poll was conducted by over 500 adjudicators, consuming over 6.5 million crowns’ (321,000 USD) worth of food.

In this week's Business News: The Czech government has announced a tender for software worth 1.5 billion crowns; safety inspectors are to begin checking Asian restaurants around the country, making sure that they are not using Chinese milk; a fraud case brought against the state-owned energy company Čepro by the Czech High State Attorney's Office has been halted; new figures from the Czech Trade and Industry Ministry suggest that sales of Czech-made musical instruments have fallen sharply; in a surprise move, a gas-tax reduction bill proposed by

Today in Mailbox: South Bohemian carp, the pronunciation of the name of the Czech-American sculptor Albín Polášek, the Czech animation artist Jiří Trnka. Listeners quoted: Colin Rose, Walter Wynn, Rusty Edwards, Hiroshi Katayama.

Since 1884, the Zátka Brothers’s plant in Boršov nad Vltavou, just south of České Budějovice in southern Bohemia, has been producing noodles, spaghetti, macaroni and other types of pasta. The small factory on the bank of the Vltava River, survived two world wars as well as totalitarianism, and is one of the few remaining witnesses to efforts by the first wave of Czech industrialists. In this edition of Panorama, we take a tour of the oldest Czech pasta plant.