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A quiet provincial town in the rolling hills of Southern Moravia is not a place where you would expect to hear the resounding tones of the operatic greats, but you have to remember that this is a musical nation. David Vaughan reports.

Tables laden with steaming Wiener schnitzels, golden and crisp roast chicken, roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut and so on - for decades those were an integral part of Czech family life. But now times seem to be changing.

Despite screening laws, former members of the communist-era intelligence services continue to hold positions of authority in today's modern equivalent, the BIS, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes reports. At least two high-ranking Czech BIS officers who received KGB training under the previous regime and worked with the Soviets to undermine NATO, now work in a politically sensitive BIS section tasked with uncovering agents from the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Recently discovered footage of Polish and Czechoslovak Jews leaving Prague for Britain in 1945 was shown for the first time on Tuesday at London's Imperial War Museum. The four and half minutes of film show 732 teenage Holocaust survivors heading for Britain, a country many of them would later make their home. Among them was Ben Helfgott, a Polish Jew from near Lodz, who was at Tuesday's premiere.

Czech roads are considered to be among the most dangerous in Europe: 1,200 people are killed in road accidents every year. The traffic police claim that this is largely due to undisciplined drivers and their own lack of clout in enforcing traffic regulations. But ask motorists to tell you their side of the story and you'll hear plenty of different arguments: poor road maintenance which makes them swerve unexpectedly to avoid potholes, overburdened highways and too many distractions in the form of road-signs, billboards and even memorial stones

The Czech national anthem describes the Czech Republic as paradise on earth, boasting waters murmuring through its meadows and forests rustling over rocky hills. Well, it looks like the country is delivering on its promises - in just forty years the area covered by forests has increased by 50,000 hectares.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has announced his choice to fill the post of culture minister, vacant since the death of Pavel Dostal three weeks ago from pancreatic cancer. From a short-list of three candidates, Mr Paroubek on Monday nominated the popular character actor Vitezslav Jandak. For the past eight years, Mr Jandak has been in the public eye as director of the annual children's film festival held in the city of Zlin. But as Brian Kenety reports, he is seen as something of a political wildcard.

Few places have such an eerie atmosphere as the little walled garrison town of Terezin, north of Prague. During the Second World War the Nazis turned the entire town into a Jewish ghetto; 155,000 people passed through its gates and of those who survived the grim conditions, the great majority later died in the death camps of the east. Today this dark legacy still hangs over Terezin. If you walk down its empty streets, the ghosts of the past often seem more real than the life of the town in the present day. Finding ways of reviving Terezin in a

The quiet suburb of Krasne Brezno in the town of Usti nad Labem witnessed something of a drama last week when police arrested one of Italy's most wanted Mafia bosses. Sicilian Luigi Putrone, sentenced in absentia for a string of brutal murders, had lived in the town for the last five years.

On Sunday the world watched a drama unfold -when news agencies reported on the tragic accident of a Cypriot airliner carrying 121 people. The plane which was bound for Prague went down just minutes before it was due to make a scheduled stopover in Athens. As the extent of the tragedy became known, people who feared their friends and relatives could have been on the flight lived through many hours of torturous uncertainty.