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In today's report from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Dita Asiedu tells about "Fear and Trembling" - a French film about culture shock in Japan and "The Technical Writer", a film about agrophobia.

The Interior Ministry has presented the Czech government with excellent news: extremism in the Czech Republic is finally on the decline. In its annual report on extremism, the Interior Ministry says that right and left wing extremist groups are losing both ground and supporters.

The International Film Festival is now well underway in the west Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary - we hear from director Wayne Kramer about his new film "The Cooler" and also Canadian actress Deborah Kara Unger about her rather ambiguous role in "Fear X".

As part of its proposed public finance reforms the government has decided to lower state subsidies in the area of housing. Until now all Czechs could invest safely in the savings programme, for five years before gaining back their funds and an additional 25 percent in dividends. For a two-parent, two-child family, the investment meant a gain of 90, 000 crowns. Now, the government wants to halve the received amount, and monitor closely just how the subsidy is spent.

Senior Czech officials held high-level talks over the weekend to discuss the return of property confiscated after the war from Franz Ulrich Kinsky, a member of an aristocratic family with long roots in Bohemia. The case goes to the very heart of the post-war Benes decrees, still a highly emotive subject in the Czech Republic. Rob Cameron has been following the case and joins me in the studio now: Rob, who is Franz Kinsky?

The fourth day of the 38th Karlovy Vary film festival is well underway offering screenings of several hundred films selected from around the world, many of them in world premiere for the first time. Founded after the Second World War, the Festival has become the most significant film event in East and Central Europe, attracting notable celebrities and thousands of film fans. It takes place in Karlovy Vary, which is a former Austro-Hungarian spa town in western Bohemia.

Before former Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan assumed the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly last September, as the first Czech ever to hold such a post, he outlined the priorities of the Czech presidency in an exclusive interview for Radio Prague, underlying the importance of conflict prevention. The efforts of the Czech presidency materialised on Thursday in the form of a resolution on preventing armed conflict, adopted by the UN General Assembly. But this is not the only Czech initiative in the area of preventing and settling

The former Jewish quarter and the St. Procopius Basilica in the Moravian town of Trebic were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites on Thursday. The quarter and Basilica increased the total number of Czech monuments registered on the UNESCO list to twelve, with the Trebic Jewish quarter as the first Jewish monument outside of Israel to added to the list.

One of the thousands of people who have worked at the station over the years is the UK-based writer and broadcaster Benjamin Kuras. Not only did Mr Kuras work at Czech Radio - he was actually on the staff here at Radio Prague. However, his time here was cut short when he - like many of his generation - left Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Soviet-led invasion of August, 1968. On a recent visit to our studio, Benjamin Kuras told Ian Willoughby exactly how long he had been at Radio Prague.

"Comrades, it's not a fact, it really happened!" - that is just one of many absurd phrases recalled from the days of Czechoslovakia's Communist regime: nonsensical decrees, statements, slogans, and citations that reveal the absurdity, ineptness, and general intellectual decline of the period. Elements now recalled in a new project launched by Senator Jaroslava Moserova in conjunction with the Foundation of Czech National Museums and Galleries, striving to save such relics before it's too late. According to Senator Moserova: those who remember are