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The BBC Symphony Orchestra, one of the world's great orchestras, has announced the name of its new Chief Conductor. It is Jiri Belohlavek, one of the most acclaimed Czech conductors, who is to replace the American Leonard Slatkin at the helm of the orchestra next year.

The Prague High Court on Tuesday upheld a five year jail sentence imposed on the former finance minister Ivo Svoboda and his close aide Barbora Snopkova. Svoboda is the first former Cabinet minister to be served a prison sentence since the fall of communism in 1989.

Any film student or film lover knows something about Czech film of the 1960s. The unforgettable directors of the Czech New Wave, Chytilova, Forman, Nemec, Menzel and many others emerged at that time, creating their very best works. Kate Barrette has more on a comprehensive new book which documents this period of Czech film.

Tuesday was the 15th anniversary of dissolution of the dreaded Communist-era secret police, the Statni bezpecnost, or StB. Formed in 1948, the StB's darkest period was the 1950s, when they were notorious for the cruelty of their interrogations. They kept tens of thousands of Czech and Slovaks under surveillance, and in the 1980s employed around 75,000 informers. I spoke to former Senator and presidential candidate Jaroslava Moserova, whose father was kept in solitary confinement by the StB for 12 long months.

Despite strong opposition from the Czech Republic and Poland -- two new European Union member states that had lived under communist regimes -- EU foreign ministers on Monday agreed to end a diplomatic freeze imposed on Cuba following the imprisonment there of 75 political activists in March 2003. But the Czechs and Poles won a moral victory in successfully pushing to allow for individual EU states to choose sides in the so-called "cocktail wars" that followed.

Fifteen years after the fall of communism the Czech Republic still has a complicated system of regulated rents. If you've been living for 20 years in the same flat and hold the same lease, you pay a low rent regulated by law. But if you don't have such lease; you are usually doomed to pay the full market price. For an identical flat you'll find yourself paying up to five times more. The Czech government now says it would like to change this system and slowly deregulate rents.

The Czech Prime Minister and head of the Social Democratic Party Stanislav Gross has found himself in a predicament that has broken many a politician's back in the democratic world. He is either unable or unwilling to explain the source of the money with which he bought a luxury flat in Prague.

This Monday marks the 220th anniversary of the birth of one of the great daughters of the Czech nation. Magdalena Dobromila Rettigova was a woman of many talents and interests but today she is perhaps best-known for her famous cookery book, which can still be found on many a bookshelf in the Czech Republic.

Following the revolution, Czech society went through a whirlwind of change. Jiri Svoboda's new film Sametove Vrazi, Velvet Murderers, examines the shadow of the post-revolutionary euphoria. The film is based on the true story of five men whose drive to take advantage of the new market opportunities spun out of control and led them to commit a series of unprecedented gruesome murders for relatively insignificant amounts of money.

After five years of field studies in Roma settlements in Eastern Slovakia, cultural anthropologist, Marek Jakoubek has sparked controversy. He claims that the Roma are not an ethnic group, arguing that they do not identify themselves as such. Jakoubek's claims have caused fury in some circles. He presented his ideas at a conference about multiculturalism in Prague this week.