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Tamizdat is a Prague-based company which distributes music from all over Central and Eastern Europe, and helps groups find an audience in the west. Tamizdat is also working on a project to preserve underground recordings made during the Communist era. Company director Mathew Covey spoke to Ian Willoughby, and began by explaining what exactly Tamizdat does.

The housing situation in the Czech Republic has long been a painful issue with no viable solution in sight. Over the past few years, Czech governments have come up with various schemes to support housing construction and make small, so-called start-up flats available to young families. Just a few days before the June general elections, the Social Democratic government has introduced low-interest loans for young people but, as Alena Skodova reports, there is a catch.

"One of the greatest stage designers of the planet called 'Theatre'", "a magician of the theatre", "a real master, craftsman and artist of theatre" - those are just a few the tributes paid to the world-renowned Czech stage designer and architect Josef Svoboda, who passed away last week. Pavla Horakova has more.

A permanent International Criminal Court - the ICC - to try crimes against humanity became a reality earlier this week after several more countries ratified the treaty which sets it up. But the Czech Republic is not among them. Alena Skodova has more:

The European Union's Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen paid a visit to Prague on Thursday, to reassure the Czechs over the post-war Benes decrees. The decrees sanctioned the expulsion of Czechoslovakia's German population after the war, and representatives of German expellees are now clamouring for compensation. Some Austrian and German politicians, meanwhile, are trying to link the issue with the Czech Republic's accession to the EU. But as Rob Cameron reports, Mr Verheugen made it quite clear to reporters that the dispute was a storm

A financial dispute pitting the Social Democrat government against parliament has raised questions about the Czech Republic's ability to finance its contribution to the U.S.-led "war on terrorism." The government is asking parliament to approve a 35 million-dollar funding package to pay for deploying a Czech army field hospital in Afghanistan and a chemical warfare unit in Kuwait, as requested by the United States and Britain. But earlier this week the lower house rejected the plan to finance the missions through the issuing of state-backed bonds.

A festival of blues music will be held on the last weekend of May in Revnice near Prague. The festival is being held for the third time this year, and it's becoming more and more popular, especially among those who do not like to go to concerts in large venues. Alena Skodova has more:

The tiny central Bohemian village of Kacov can hardly lay claim to fame exactly, but it has received a fair bit of attention in the past six years. Not so long ago NATO officials allegedly zeroed in on a bizarre looking unidentified object near Kacov on their satellite maps of central Europe and asked the Czech defence ministry for an explanation. As it turned out, the bizarre looking object had nothing to do with the Czech Republic's military arsenal - it was the biggest collection of used refrigerators in the world - over 1,800 of

Last week, a legend of modern Czech sculpture, Karel Nepras, died of a stroke in a Prague hospital. It seems like a trick of fate that a man who had always mocked absurd things died just two days after his 70th birthday, at a time, when a retrospective exhibition of his life-long work is being prepared.

How much advertising can one stand? Advertising has permeated our daily lives to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to avoid. The Prague authorities have now put their foot down and banned what Czechs have come to call "walking" ads - on the grounds that this form of advertising in the streets of the Czech capital is a nuisance which irritates both the locals and foreign visitors. Daniela Lazarova has the story: