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This week Poland marks the 25th anniversary of the strike at the Gdansk shipyard where the Solidarity movement was born. Solidarity served as a beacon of hope to dissidents in the region, and there was close co-operation between Czechoslovak and Polish anti-Communist activists.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek sacked his chief aide on Monday over allegations of corruption relating to the June 2004 privatisation of Unipetrol, a major Czech oil and chemicals group. Several days ago, the prime minister received an incriminating cassette tape of his aide, Zdenek Dolezel, discussing the deal with a foreign lobbyist -- and reacting with silence to allegations that ruling Social Democrat party members had sought bribes to approve the sale.

At the weekend Prague lost one it most famous photographers, Vaclav Chochola, who died after brief illness at the age of 82. Chochola, whose hey-day lasted from the 40s throughout the 1970s, was one of the most respected photographers in Czechoslovakia; even those who unfamiliar with his name will have seen his photo of painter Salvador Dali in Paris, in 1969. The somewhat weary-looking Dali casts a playful eye at the camera, as he holds up a single perfect egg.

They once used to roam around Europe in large herds but since the Middle Ages they have been on the verge of extinction. We are talking about the European bison, a close relative of the American buffalo. Bison are believed to have disappeared from the Czech lands many centuries ago. But this week, one - or perhaps a couple were spotted in the woods of the Jizerske Mountains in North Bohemia.

Just over a year ago the Czech Republic lost one of its great sports heroes. Former hockey player and later national team coach Ivan Hlinka was killed in a car accident - at the height of his fame. A year on, an exhibition has opened in Prague as a tribute to the man who led the Czech hockey team from one victory to another.

Czech football suffered a major embarrassment on Wednesday when a thief broke into the locker rooms during a Champions League qualifying match between Slavia Praha and Belgium's Anderlecht. The thief made off with Anderlecht players' passports, cash and valuables estimated at more than 15,000 euros.

In the months leading up to last year's expansion of the European Union, many member states expressed concern about a potential influx of cheap labour from the new member countries. Most chose to introduce a transitional period of restrictions, while Sweden, Ireland, and Britain opened their labour markets. A British government study conducted last year forecast that between 5,000-13,000 workers from the new EU member states would register for work every year. But that number has been the average registered every month.

Two former teenage contestants on the Czech version of the international hit show 'Pop Idol' have joined forces for a one-off duet. The young men, Samer Issa and Filip Jankovic, both made it into the final rounds of the enormously popular television show Cesko hleda Superstar. Can they capitalise on their '15 minutes' of fame?

The expulsion of more than two million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II has long remained a source of tension in Czech-German relations and one of the most controversial chapters in Czechoslovakia's post-war history. On Wednesday, for the first time, the Czech government expressed a symbolic apology and regret over the post-war victimisation of thousands of Sudeten Germans, who had remained loyal to the Czechoslovak state and had been active in the anti-Nazi resistance. The gesture, approved unanimously by the government, has

Prague's Old Town Square, Charles Bridge and other attractive parts of the historic centre are busier these days than usual. It's because a South Korean film crew are shooting a romantic TV series in the city called "Lovers in Prague". It is a sequel to a popular series "Lovers in Paris" which had a regular audience of 10 million people and radically increased the number of Koreans travelling to the French capital.