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May 1st is still a national holiday in the Czech Republic - Labour Day Holiday - though not many people in this country observe it as such. The years of May Day parades and socialist slogans extolling the virtues of work have put them off all that.

Although we're not going to look at the life of a particular person in today's programme, we'll plunge into quite remote history - the end of the 19th century, because it's the time when workers began to stand up and defend their rights, and it's also at this time, when the tradition of May Day celebrations was founded.

These days, May 1st is a time of love. In smaller towns and villages people will put up a Maypole, in the evening they'll light bonfires and young couples will dance and flirt and jump over the flames in a sort of spring love ritual. Here in Prague couples of all ages will stroll through Petrin Hill - a place where lovers have walked for centuries. People who seek love - or those who are lucky enough to have found it - often lay a spring flower at the statue of the 19th century poet Karel Hynek Macha, who has become a patron of lovers and whose

Welcome to our special "First of May" edition of our Czech language series, the ABC of Czech. This particular day deserves a special programme, so let's take a break from the alphabet and look at something related to today's programme. No, it's neither love as you might have thought (you'll have to wait for that until the letter "L"), nor labour.

Communism, like any totalitarian regime, was built on fear and repression. the human toll was high. Over a quarter of a million people were sent to prisons and work camps where 4,000 are estimated to have died. In May the victims of Communism are being honoured by a series of events around the Czech Republic. One is called "Jachymov Hell", after the notorious work camp centred around a uranium mine in the north Bohemian town. Organiser Frantisek Sedivy explained why the "Jachymov Hell" memorial was being held.

While the world waits for US President Bush to announce the official end of the war in Iraq, six countries are already busy working on a plan to help rebuild the middle eastern state. The Czech Republic, which was not official an ally of the US and Britain during the war but had its anti-chemical unit stationed in neighbouring Kuwait in case of a chemical attack, was one of the six countries invited to join the discussions in Baghdad this week. Dita Asiedu reports:

A year ago we reported on a brave young Czech couple who decided to conquer the world on their bicycles. Lucie Kovarikova and Michal Jon told their bosses they were taking a three-year holiday, packed their bags, got on their bikes and set off on May 1st last year. First they headed north, to Germany and via Denmark they carried on to Greenland and then they cycled through Scandinavia. In Russia they said good-bye to Europe, rode through Mongolia, China, South Korea and Japan and then took a flight to Australia and made a short stopover in Tasmania.

For many it may still seem like 'early days' for a plan drafted by the government ten years ago and overseen by the Bureau for the Storage of Radioactive Waste: a plan to see the Czech Republic build its own deep storage facility over the next 62 years. However, that is a normal time-span in a field dealing with material as sensitive and dangerous as spent radioactive fuel.

Police in the Moravian town of Sumperk announced on Monday that the badly-burnt body of a man had been discovered near the town's graveyard. They're still trying to identify the man, and also ascertain exactly how he died, but all the evidence suggests he burnt himself to death. If confirmed, this would be the seventh case of self-immolation in less than two months - an extraordinary statistic. Rob Cameron has been following the story and joins me now in the studio - Rob, what do we know about this latest case?

In just a few days parliament is due to appoint a new Council for TV and Radio Broadcasting, to replace the previous Council which was sacked over the TV Nova arbitration affair. But the government appears to be putting pressure on the new body even before it's come into existence: Culture Minister Pavel Dostal was quoted as saying on Monday there were clear grounds for the Council to revoke TV Nova's licence - something the previous Council stubbornly refused to do. With such a politically sensitive appointment just days away Mr Dostal's comments