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From an all time high of 42 CZK in 1997, the value of the US dollar against the Czech crown has been plummeting in the last year or so. The mighty greenback is now only worth around 23 CZK.

The 500 million euro sale of the hugely successful station TV Nova is the biggest business deal of the year in the Czech Republic. What makes the sale especially interesting is the buyer - CME, the American company which was controversially forced out of Nova just five years ago.

Ticket sales for the 2005 international Prague Spring music festival opened on Monday.

With temperatures around zero degrees Celsius most of us are covered up from head to toe, drinking hot chocolate or mulled wine to keep warm. However, some "hardy" individuals walk around in a T-shirt and shorts and can't wait for their annual winter swim in the Vltava river on January 1st. Training one's body to deal with the cold has become something of a cult in the Czech Republic and the Czech language even has a special name for these "hardy fellows" - they are called: otuzilci. One of them went for a swim this weekend - to set a new record for

Czech senators, judges, police, school principles and parents have pledged to join forces in the battle against drugs. At a recent meeting at the Senate, the first of its kind, they said it was time for a radical change of approach in the Czech Republic, which has the highest consumption of marihuana and ecstasy in the EU.

In 2001 the UK authorities introduced controversial controls at Prague's Ruzyne Airport of passengers traveling to Great Britain. Six Roma people, who were prevented from entering Great Britain, complained to British courts. Last week the highest appeal court in the UK, the Law Lords, ruled that the government's immigration rules racially discriminated against Czech Roma passengers.

During the four decades Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain, hundreds if not thousands of people tried to make their way to freedom across the country's heavily guarded borders. Many died in the process, with 282 definite cases and up to 40 more probable killings. Of the certified cases, 145 people were shot trying to cross the border, and almost 100 were electrocuted, with the others dying in a variety of ways, such as drowning. Those figures come from a report out this week by Martin Pulec from the Office for the Documentation and Investigation

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra has been nominated for a grammy award for its recording of Bohuslav Martinu's Symphonies 3 and 4, with world reknown Czech conductor Jiri Belohlavek.

Five soldiers were killed and six were injured when an express train ploughed into their military vehicle at a rail crossing in the eastern part of the country on Thursday. This tragedy has highlighted the extremely high number of accidents that happen at Czech rail crossings every year.

Artists, art historians and art lovers fill a cozy, attic meeting room on the top floor of the Kampa Museum of Modern Art. They are looking at slides of abstract Polish prints from the 1960s. Later they will watch experimental Hungarian films from the Bela Balazs studio in Budapest. They came here on Wednesday night - to begin a long overdue conversation.