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Amidst growing fear of terrorist attacks and weapons of mass destruction, NATO is setting up a 500 strong multinational battalion specialized in nuclear, biological and chemical detection. The Czech Republic, a respected international authority in this field, has been given a lead role in setting up the unit, ensuring its action capability and being in command in the first year of its existence.

On Thursday the world celebrated the arrival of this year's Beaujolais Nouveau. The Czech Republic was no exception, but the country also has it's own equivalent of this great French wine institution.

Czech country music fans are mourning the loss of singer-songwriter Jiri Brabec. The singer, a country-rock legend in the Czech Republic, was declared missing on Tuesday and was found dead by police in his south Bohemian country cottage on Wednesday evening. Country music roots in the Czech Republic run deep largely due to the achievements of Jiri Brabec. Kay Grigar with the details.

The Czech government has taken an important step in helping the country's troubled health insurers, including the largest Vseobecna Zdravotni Pojistovna, the VZP, by ordering the state consolidation agency to take over three billion crowns of bad debts. Insurers, including the VZP, are in need of the financial support to be able to pay out their claims on time - after being caught in a vicious cycle. Each year they miss billions of crowns owed by Czech firms and members of the public chronically neglecting to pay...

Only a few weeks ago a giant beech tree was voted the most beautiful tree in the Czech Republic. The competition proved unexpectedly successful. Almost thirty thousand people have voted for their favourite tree. Evidently Czechs have a special relationship to their trees.

The Czech Republic was once grappling with a drug epidemic that was steadily on the rise in the 1990's. According to the annual report on drugs in the Czech Republic the situation may be stabilizing or - at the very least it seems more people are becoming inclined to take lighter drugs - as opposed to drugs such as heroin or pervitin.

Many of the Czech Republic's most popular rock bands took part in a benefit concert held in Prague on Tuesday night called " S komunisty se nemluvi", or "You Shouldn't Talk to Communists". The timing of the concert was significant: it came the day after the anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution, and a week after polls suggested a quarter of Czechs now support the Communist Party.

A minor diplomatic storm appears to be brewing between Prague and Vienna, after reports emerged in the Czech media that the Czech Republic was planning to expand the Temelin nuclear power plant, which opened in October 2000. Austria's ambassador to Prague has spoken of his country's grave concern at the prospect of more reactors being built at Temelin. The Czech government, meanwhile, has tried to downplay the affair.

Mezipatra 2003, the fourth annual Czech gay and lesbian film festival, started in Brno last week, where it was very well received. The festival kicked off in Prague on Monday and it will run here until next Sunday. We went along to the opening night to assess the local reaction to the event.

Monday was a holiday here in the Czech Republic, marking the fourteenth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that put an unexpected end to forty years of Communist rule. Although the country's historians and politicians are still arguing over who should be credited for the Communists' downfall, the major role of the dissident movement has never really been questioned. But in an article for last Saturday's daily Mlada Fronta Dnes, Czech President Vaclav Klaus played down the role of the dissident elite, saying it was ordinary people, leading their