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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

A new survey released on Thursday by the TNS Factum agency claimed that the Communist Party has now well and truly overtaken the largest party in the coalition government, the Social Democrats, leading them by four points. Other polls taken over the last few months have produced similar results - the Communists appear to have consolidated their position as the second strongest force in the land. But is this just a case of lies, damn lies, and opinion polls? We asked analyst Tomas Sedlacek.

Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, the Champs Elysees in Paris, London's Oxord street - these and other swanky avenues regularly finish at the top of a survey called Main Streets Across the World, published annually by real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker. The latest survey out this week has shown Prague's own Na Prikope Street has made it to the top 18. Jan Velinger spoke with Jonathan Hallett, the head of the Prague branch of Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker. He began by asking the realties expert whether Na Prikope Street's placing

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel was awarded the first ever Ambassador of Conscience award by the human rights organization Amnesty International in the Irish capital, Dublin on Thursday night. The title for the award was inspired by a poem written by the Irish Nobel Literature Laureate Seamus Heaney to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Amnesty International in 1986.