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The Czech-Polish food war which dates back to 2012 flared up anew on Monday as the Polish agriculture minister Marek Sawicki accused the Czech authorities of employing dishonest practices aimed at hurting Polish imports. He claimed that the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority had ordered a blanket nation-wide inspection targeting exclusively Polish goods and said his country would complain to the European Commission over discrimination of Polish products.

The Czech government remains opposed to EU efforts to impose gender quotas for the boards of state-owned and listed companies across the EU. A vote in the cabinet on Monday went against proposed draft legislation which would ensure that by 2020 four out of every ten non-executive directorships of listed companies are filled by women.

Wanted? Dead or alive? The fate of the South Stream gas pipeline bringing Russian, or perhaps Caspian, natural gas under the Black Sea is still a moot point it seems.

The biggest player in Czech cyberspace, the local search engine and website Seznam.cz, increased its revenues to three billion crowns this year, compared to 2.9 billion in the previous year. The most popular Czech search engine expects to post a final profit of 930 million crowns for the whole of 2014, Seznam’s general manager Pavel Zima told the Czech News Agency on Thursday.

An ice storm that has affected the Czech Republic in the last couple of days has hit insurers and rail operators, with the latter providing compensation to passengers, but has had little impact on manufacturing and construction firms.

The Czech Construction industry is showing signs of recovery after seven years of falling output. This year’s predicted one percent growth copies a similar trend across Europe. According to Euroconstruct’s forecast for 2015-2017 the lean years for Europe’ construction industry are definitely over.

Black Friday, a day of discounts immediately after Thanksgiving intended to boost sales in the pre-Christmas period, has spread beyond America’s borders, with the UK in particular experiencing shopping fever at the end of last week. The sales drive has also reached the Czech Republic, though there were no scenes of customers coming to blows over TV sets; in this country Black Friday overwhelmingly concerns online retailers.

A dispute over the purchase of land needed for the extension of the D11 motorway from Prague to Hradec Králové in East Bohemia has finally come to an end, after long twenty years of negotiations between the state and the farmer, whose land obstructed the construction.

Czech consumers can look forward to lower electricity bills in 2015. The country’s Energy Regulatory Office on Wednesday announced a 1.2 percent drop in the regulated price of electricity for households which should save consumers hundreds, if not thousands, of crowns annually. Although the regulated component only accounts for 60 percent of the final electricity price, most suppliers have confirmed that the price of electricity will drop.

After the success of its Potrefená husa chain, the Prague-based Staropramen brewery is planning a new network of restaurants under the banner Naše hospoda (Our Pub), Czech news websites have reported.