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Czech cyclist Roman Kreuziger is sitting in 13th place overall in the Tour de France after Friday’s 19th stage in the competition. He is the currently the youngest rider in the top 20 of the Tour. Speaking to Reuters on Friday, Kreuziger said he was enjoying his Tour de France debut, and that the competition was a ‘learning curve’ for him. The director of Kreuziger’s team, Liquigas, has said that he has been suitably impressed by the 22-year old. Stefano Zanatta praised Kreuziger for being ‘physically and mentally’ above other cyclists of his age.

The Archive of Czech Security Forces has made public registration protocols of defunct military counter-intelligence dating back to Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime. The documents were made accessible on Friday at the Archive’s website. The database is said to contain more than 300 registration files with details on some 140,000 people. The head of the archives, Ladislav Bukovský, said that the reason the records were being made public was to achieve maximum transparency. He said that Communist counter-intelligence files could pertain to former agents or persons vetted by the former military counter-intelligence, abolished in 1990. The oldest of the files dates back to 1954 – the last to 1989, when the communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his Czech counterpart Václav Klaus have said Ireland has a key role to play in the future of the Lisbon Treaty, following Irish voters’ rejection of the document. The two heads of state said that resolving the issue would require time and patience. After talks at the Czech presidential residence at Lány near Prague on Thursday, Mr Kaczynski said without Ireland’s ratification Lisbon did not exist. But he said Poland would not impede ratification of the treaty, which is intended to reform the running of the European Union. For his part, Mr Klaus, who is a euro-sceptic, is firmly opposed to further EU integration; he welcomed the Irish “No” vote last month.

The Czech Parliament is due to vote on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon towards the end of this year, after the Czech Constitutional Court rules on whether it is in line with the Czech constitution.

Police investigating a theft at the office of Czech MP Petr Wolf say there is no evidence that the crime was politically-motivated. But they stressed they were not ruling out any possibilities for the time being. An unknown perpetrator stole a laptop computer from the MP’s office on Thursday; Petr Wolf is currently abroad, but made headlines not long ago for his sudden departure form the opposition Social Democratic Party. The MP has claimed the party’s leader, Jiří Paroubek, had tried to intimidate him during this year’s presidential election, saying he had threatened to go public with alleged discrepancies in Wolf’s business dealings. Petr Wolf’s wife has expressed fear over the theft, saying there was a clear connection to politics.