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Brass-band music has a long history in the Czech Republic. In fact, some of the world's best known marching songs were first written and played in this country. Today, however, brass-band music or "dechovka", as it is known here, is apparently facing something of a crisis.

A new book entitled "Students and Communist Rule between 1968 and 1989" has just appeared on the bookshelves. The aim is to highlight the special role Czech students played not only in overthrowing the communist regime fourteen years ago, but throughout the totalitarian era.

Moving on to some good news for Czech football fans, especially those who couldn't get tickets for September's Euro 2004 qualifier against Holland, because Prague's 20,000-capacity Letna stadium was sold-out. Prague City Council on Tuesday expressed its support for the building of a new 50,000 thousand-seat national sports stadium in the city's Strahov district.

A new political scandal appears to be brewing this week, after Social Democrat MP Josef Hojdar announced that police had discovered a bugging device in his car. The MP has been saying for some time that the intelligence services are bugging him, an accusation they categorically deny. So who's behind it?

Visitors admiring the beauty of Prague's spires and the colourful facades of its historic buildings are often in for an unpleasant surprise. Prague residents learnt long ago that it's safest to walk around the city with their eyes down. That's because the streets of the capital are often littered with dog excrement, which the city authorities spend tens of millions of crowns a year cleaning up. The money from dog licences is used to clean up the dog mess, though it is not enough. The city council has now proposed the licence fee be increased by

Police in Prague have launched an investigation after a monument to victims of the Communist era was damaged in an explosion. No-one was injured in the blast, which is believed to have occurred early on Sunday morning. Police are now examining traces of the explosive for clues as to who carried out the attack.

This week visitors to Prague's Svanda Theatre are being treated to a feast of Balkan music, with the launch of a new CD by the band Gothart. In the northern climes of the Czech Republic this is not a traditional sound - associated more with sand and sea and summer holidays on the Adriatic where Czech tourists flock in their hundreds of thousands every summer. But what's unusual about this recording is that all the musicians are Czech. David Vaughan asked world music expert Petr Doruzka for his impressions of the new CD, and started with its rather

A recent row in the Czech Senate regarding the wording of a bill submitted to it by the Chamber of Deputies has focused attention on the workings of Parliament's Upper House. It appears that a typographical error in a draft amendment gave a bill submitted to the Senate a different meaning to that which MPs thought they had approved, which rendered it invalid. The intervention of the Constitutional Court may be needed to resolve the situation

This past weekend saw the Czech Republic's Christian Democratic Party choose a new chairman in a relatively close race between front-runners Deputy Miroslav Kalousek and Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda, who ran the party for the last two years. In the end Mr Svoboda failed to gain another mandate, with Mr Kalousek edging the former leader by 33 votes. The tally at the end of the day: 164 - 131. But, what do the results all mean? The Christian Democrats have now elected their third leader in four years. Not only that: Miroslav Kalousek is known for

According to the Interior Ministry's statistics, almost 10,000 traffic accidents in 2002 were caused by drunk drivers or pedestrians. Alcohol on the roads was responsible for 136 deaths and more than 5,000 injuries last year. To increase awareness of the dangers of drunk driving, the road safety department of the Interior Ministry has launched the largest ever information campaign in this country, which is to last until the end of January next year. Also, it is the first time such a campaign is being co-financed by producers of alcoholic