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Yugoslavia was one of the few countries where Czechoslovak citizens could go on holiday to the seaside during the Communist era, and the relationship has always been a close one. The post-Communist split of Yugoslavia was - unlike the division of Czechoslovakia - a bloody affair, and the entire region will have to deal with the consequences of the wars for a long time. One of the people at the centre of events just before the outbreak of the conflict was the former Yugoslav president, Raif Dizdarevic, who was in Prague last week. Pavla Horakova

The Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, based in Washington, is the biggest and most influential organization of Czech and Slovak intellectuals living abroad. It has over two thousand members, who meet for conferences and gatherings around the world. What they share is an interest in their homeland, a desire to help their country and, in many cases, a feeling of nostalgia for what they had to leave behind when they fled Czechoslovakia for political reasons.

The third Nine Gates Festival that celebrates Prague's traditional mix of Czech, German and Jewish culture is to begin in the Czech capital on Thursday. Running until July 3rd, it offers numerous concerts, theatre performances, discussions, workshops as well as screenings of documentaries and films, including the Czech premier of "the Diary of Anne Frank", starring Ben Kingsley. Dita Asiedu spoke to the president of the festival, writer Arnost Lustig and started off by asking him what the festival's goal was:

The Czech Republic has one of the highest prison populations in the developed world. One person in every five hundred is currently behind bars. Prison reform is the subject of an international conference currently under way in the town of Kromeriz. David Vaughan looks at some of the problems being discussed.

One of the main fears in the weeks leading up to the Czech parliamentary elections was that the outcome would be inconclusive, followed by long and agonizing talks to put together a coalition. But with the Social Democrats as clear and confident victors, the post-election horse-trading is going surprisingly smoothly. David Vaughan reports.

A multiple tram collision occurred in Prague's Modrany district on Monday morning, involving a total of 5 trams. The accident left 18 passengers injured, some of them seriously, and has also raised questions about the safety of Prague's aging fleet of trams. Alena Skodova has the details:

The prime ministers of central Europe, otherwise known as the Visegrad group, will be meeting in Hungary and Slovakia this weekend. Following elections in the Czech Republic and Hungary, they are hoping to put behind them such thorny issues as the post-war Benes Decrees, issues that caused the collapse of the last Visegrad summit in the spring. They are hoping, as the Polish Prime Minister Lezsek Miller put it, "to open a new chapter of co-operation" and come up with a joint position on membership talks for EU entry. But do ordinary Czechs actually

Although according to the calendar it was still officially spring, a heat-wave hit the Czech Republic last week with temperatures shooting up to the mid-30s. Every year Czech weathermen record more and more of what they call "tropical days", that is days with maximum daytime temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. For at least the past decade the Czech Republic has been experiencing fewer ice days - days when the temperature stays below freezing point. Is this only a random quirk of nature or a more profound change of the country's climate?

Representatives of the Czech Republic and other candidates for EU membership are confident that their bids to join the union in 2004 are well on track. During the European Union's summit in Seville over the weekend, the leaders of the 15 member states assured the EU hopefuls that they were determined to conclude membership negotiations in December and have the accession treaties signed in the spring of 2003. But despite the declaration it was clear that disputes within the EU over the costs of enlargement are far from resolved. One such

As every devoted mushroom-picker in the Czech Republic will tell you, the mushroom-picking season has begun. Even though experts say that due to increasing pollution it's not too healthy to eat them, mushroom-picking still remains a kind of Czech national pastime. But those who want to sell mushrooms are currently facing a problem: they have to have their eyes tested. Alena Skodova has more: