Following talks with US President Joe Biden on Monday, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala visited the US Congress on Tuesday meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson and a number of Democrat and Republican lawmakers ahead of a crucial vote on funding for Ukraine.

Písek, a South Bohemian town of around 30,000 inhabitants, was an important town in the Middle Ages and has a well-preserved medieval centre with six churches and a partly preserved Gothic castle, rebuilt into the town hall and a brewery. Known as a centre of education, it also is home to a number of important schools.

A telescope in the Štefánik Observatory on Prague’s Petřín hill has been returned after underdoing extensive repairs in Germany for two years. The telescope, which was first placed in the observatory in 1930, allows visitors to observe the moon, planets, and even the Sun during the day. Magdalena Hrnkova, a specialist at the Observatory, told me more.

Support for Ukraine in the face of Moscow’s aggression was among the main items on the agenda when the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, was welcomed at the White House by US President Joe Biden on Monday. Indeed Mr. Fiala told his host he remembered Russian tanks on Czech streets – and did not wish to see them again.

The Jewish Museum in Prague has joined an international project called the Library of Lost Books. It invites readers from all over the world to help track down the thousands of books that once belonged to the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin, one of the world’s most important Jewish libraries before the Second World War.

About one million people live on the poverty line here in Czechia – that’s nearly one tenth of the country’s population. This past weekend, a spring food collection was hosted by the Czech Federation of Food Banks and will continue to accept donations online till the end of the month. I asked the Federation’s spokesperson, Vendula Seifertová, to tell me how it went.

Czechia joined international condemnation of Iran's strikes on Israel on Saturday night, backing Israel’s right to self-defense and expressing concern regarding a further destabilization of the region.  The worsening global security situation is expected to be high on the agenda of Monday’s meeting between US President Joe Biden and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala.

The Mriya International Film Festival will take place in Prague on Saturday, screening films made by Ukrainian directors while raising funds for the country. The festival had its premiere back in 2022 in Toronto, Canada, and the founder and organizer Kateryna Horina told me more about its expansion across Europe.

The Prague Zoo has announced the birth of a critically endangered western lowland gorilla cub. The baby gorilla, whose sex still remains unknown, was born to 30-year-old mother Kijivu and 26-year-old father Kisumu in the early hours of Friday morning. It is already the second gorilla cub born in the zoo this year. A female named Mobi was born at the beginning of January. I discussed the latest news with the zoo’s spokesman Filip Mašek:

Travelling along Route 66, riding free by plane, going to a casino and taking part in a beer run. These are just some of the many adventures Czech traveller Vojtěch Pechar experienced on a hitchhiking trip across the United States, during which he didn’t spend a cent of his own money. He spent three months travelling from New York to San Francisco, passing through 18 states, getting rides in 50 cars and covering a distance of 9,000 kilometres. He documented his journey on an Instagram account called Mullet na tripu or Mullet on a Trip, which refers to his rather unusual haircut, and which attracted more than 90,000 followers. I caught up with Vojtěch Pechar to discuss his unusual journey and I started by asking him what made him embark on his trip across the US without a single dollar.