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Advent is a time when most Christmas exhibitions open throughout the Czech Republic to make people stop in the pre-Christmas hustle and bustle and think about the spiritual values of the season. One such exhibition opened last week at the Ceska sporitelna bank premises in the centre of Prague. Alena Skodova went along and brings this report:

The cleaners were busy vacuuming the carpets at Copenhagen's Bella Centre this morning, ahead of the decisive EU enlargement summit in the Danish capital which begins on Thursday. The summit could go down as one of the stormiest in the EU's history - members and candidates, including the Czech Republic, are still haggling over the terms of enlargement, and negotiations could continue well into the weekend. My colleague Rob Cameron is also getting ready for a busy week in Copenhagen - when do you think you'll actually be able to come back home to

Five years ago this week, Czech doctors at Prague's Motol hospital carried out the first lung transplant in the country's history. Today, the Motol Hospital Transplant Centre is still the only facility in the former Communist bloc which performs lung transplants, and they've carried out a total of 47 in the last five years. Dita Asiedu reports:

The government was due to submit a report on the country's hospitals on Friday, amid mounting concerns over rising levels of debt. The Health Ministry has said the combined debt of the country's hospitals is some 800 million crowns, or 25 million dollars. Some pharmaceutical companies have taken the drastic step of supplying medicines on a cash-only basis to those hospitals which can't pay their debts. The problem has also taken on a political dimension - on January 1st the country's hospitals are due to be transferred from the state to the new

Yesterday, the streets of Prague were filled with farmers who came to tell the government exactly what they thought of the current state of negotiations with the European Union over farming subsidies, and the protestors were clearly angry.

For Czech pilot Jana Zejdova gliding is preferable to walking. She undertook her first solo flight at age 17 and today has 52 world records to her name. Constantly seeking new challenges in the sky, Hana is now dreaming of achieving the near-impossible - a flight around the world in a glider.

Members of the opposition Civic Democratic Party (ODS) meet next week to choose a new leader, replacing founding father Vaclav Klaus who steps down after 12 years in the post. After dominating successive right-of-centre governments for most of the 1990s, the party now appears to be drifting aimlessly. Some hope Mr Klaus's departure will herald the beginning of a new era, although he'll also be a tough act to follow - for many Vaclav Klaus simply was the Civic Democrats. One man who wants to step into his shoes is deputy chairman Petr Necas, an

According to the Minister of Information Technology, Vladimir Mlynar, the Czech Postal Service should enable all citizens to have access to the Internet at post offices throughout the country. The company already has the necessary infrastructure - all 3,400 post offices in the Czech Republic are connected to a high-speed backbone network. Alena Skodova reports:

Two weeks ago the Czech Constitutional court ruled that the rent system in place was unconstitutional for a second time. The decision has forced the country's coalition government to finally address the problem of liberalization of the housing market.

For years now many Czech doctors have been collecting sensitive information about their patients. They say that detailed questionnaires on ethnicity, sexual orientation and lifestyle help them provide better care. Now the Health Ministry wants to take this practice further by setting up a central register of patients which would include such sensitive information in conjunction with an identification number, with the help of which any person can easily be traced.