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The larger than life former prime minister Milos Zeman didn't mince his words while he was in politics, frequently employing razor sharp wit and choice language to put fellow politicians and journalists firmly in their place. But retirement at a cottage in the country does not seem to have mellowed Mr Zeman; his no holds barred memoirs have just been published, creating quite of a stir.

All over the Czech Republic, expect to hear the pitter-patter of tiny Terezas; and the tantrums of boys called Jan. They were last year's most popular names for babies. This was revealed in a report just out, which compared the names of today's Czech toddlers, with those of their parents and grandparents. Rosie Johnston sorts the Jans from the Jiris ...

Only five Czech Roma out of every hundred is thought to have survived the Second World War — the vast majority of Romani people now living in the Czech lands are descended from Slovak Roma; their ancestors encouraged or compelled to settle here under the communist regime. It is because there are so few original Czech Romanies alive today that the newly published memoirs of two otherwise ordinary women are so extraordinary.

Sir Nicholas Winton has come to be known as Britain's Oskar Schindler. In the weeks after the Nazis occupied the Czech Lands in March 1939, he quietly arranged for the safe passage of more than 650 Jewish children to Britain. Today children learn about his story, and, as Kate Barrette now reports, are even adding a chapter of their own.

All governments in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism have been cautious over reforming the country's system of state controlled rents, afraid of the impact on the less well-off. Landlords on the other hand, have been increasingly vociferous in their complaints that the low rents collected from their tenants cannot cover maintenance costs. Now a lawsuit that Czech landlords are planning to file with The European Court of Human Rights may speed up the process of rent deregulation.

Two secondary schools in the Czech Republic have won a quality award for their excellent educational projects, organized as a part of the European Union's Leonardo da Vinci program. The projects were among the top twenty in Europe, and were awarded a certificate of quality at an international conference in Norway last month.

Hundreds of people attended a rally in Prague's Old Town Square on Friday to mark the 57th anniversary of the communist seizure of power in February 1948. Under the very same balcony at which Klement Gottwald announced the communist takeover, the crowd listened in respectful silence as a speaker read out the names of the people executed by the communist regime that ruled this country for over forty years.

Prague's Jewish Museum does not only include synagogues and exhibitions commemorating the city's Jewish past. It also features contemporary art with a Jewish theme. In the Robert Guttmann Gallery, round the corner from the historic Spanish Synagogue - you can currently find an interesting artwork named "Layered Histories" created by American artists Cynthia Beth Rubin and Robert J. Gluck. It tells a story of a 13th century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, today known as the "Marseilles Bible".

February 25th of 1948 - the day of the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia- is a day that those who lived through prefer to forget and the young generation usually has no idea what the date is linked to. But Czechs wouldn't be Czechs if they couldn't poke fun at everything - even the dark chapters of their history.

Exactly 57 years ago, on 25 February 1948 the Communists seized power in post-war Czechoslovakia. This marked the beginning of more than four decades of hard line communist rule, brought to an end by the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Czechoslovak Communist leader Klement Gottwald on that fateful day in 1948 announced on Prague's Old Town Square that the resignation of several non-communist ministers had been accepted by the president. Even though the change to a totalitarian system did not happen just overnight, this event was symbolic of the start