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Although Czechs chose their new MPs on Friday and Saturday, the term of the outgoing lower house of the Czech parliament ends this Thursday, on June 20. Last Thursday, the Chamber of Deputies sat for the last time. Besides some serious partying and watching the World Cup on TV the MPs managed to reject an important bill at the last moment. Only a few days before the lower house finally dissolves, Pavla Horakova looks at the last four years in the Chamber.

A military band plays a slow march as Czechoslovak veterans lay wreaths outside the Church of Cyril and Methodius in Prague's Resslova street. Sixty years ago today, on June 18th 1942, hundreds of SS and Gestapo units surrounded the building. They were there to track down a group of British-trained Czechoslovak parachutists, who were hiding in the crypt of the church. Among them were Sergeant Jan Kubis and Sergeant Josef Gabcik, who three weeks earlier had assassinated the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhardt Heydrich. For six

In the early 1990s, Prague City Gallery deposited a number of 19th century paintings and handicrafts at Troja chateau, which the gallery owns. This year, the Gallery decided to use a substantial part of the chateau for exhibiting the most important examples of its rich collection of Czech sculpture. Alena Skodova has more:

So why did the Communists do so well? What went wrong for Mr Klaus's Civic Democrats, who scored their worst result in the party's history? How stable will any centre-left coalition be, with just 101 of the 200 seats in parliament? For an answer to these and other questions, Rob Cameron spoke to Vaclav Zak, editor-in-chief of the political bi-monthly Listy:

The Czech Republic is still reeling from the unexpected success of the Communist Party in the weekend's elections, and analysts are scratching their heads trying to come up with the reasons behind their success. But in many ways it was a hollow victory - the party remains politically untouchable, and its chances of entering government are minimal. Rob Cameron examines the party's mixed fortunes in this report.

Saturday witnessed a sad commemoration on the site of the village of Lidice, wiped off the map by the Nazis sixty years ago this month. Half the Czech government, as well as ambassadors and other guests from across the world joined survivors of the Lidice tragedy, to remember the 173 men and 82 children from the village who were murdered by the Nazis in revenge for the assassination of the man they had put in charge of the occupied Czech Lands, Reinhard Heydrich. Lidice has become one of the symbols of Czech resistance to Nazism. David Vaughan

In the Czech electoral system, lists of candidates are drawn up by party organisations and those candidates are then fielded in an order decided on by the local party. Those already in high politics tend to be placed at the top of the list, while party workers, who in reality have no chance of being elected, make up the numbers at the other end. Eva Novakova is seventh on the list of Social Democrat candidates in the Prague constituency, and Ian Willoughby asked her how the list system worked.

Party representatives are glued to their TV screens, closely watching the election results come in. Rob Cameron is at the Civic Democratic Party's headquarters and tells us what the atmosphere is like:

One of the first people to vote as the polls opened in Prague on Friday afternoon was President Havel. In glorious spring sunshine, David Vaughan joined hordes of other journalists in a suburban primary school to wait for the presidential pair to turn up. He didn't have to wait long. At two fifteen Mr and Mrs Havel entered polling booth, and the camera shutters began to click.

Half the Czech government, as well as cultural figures and ambassadors from as far afield as Japan and Venezuela, attended a memorial ceremony and ecumenical mass on Saturday morning on the site of Lidice, the Czech village that the Nazis razed to the ground 60 years ago this week. On June 10th 1942, 173 men were shot and the women and children were transported to concentration camps. Of the children only seventeen survived. The only two Lidice men to survive were airmen who were fighting at the time in Britain's Royal Air Force. The English