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One of the political developments over the weekend was the decision by the chairman of the Social Democrats and former prime minister Stanislav Gross to step down. Mr Gross made the announcement at the party leadership meeting on Saturday where he also said he was not even going to run for a parliament seat in next year's general election.

Although general elections in the Czech Republic are eight months away, this weekend marked the beginning of what commentators predict will be a tough election campaign. The impulse came from the ruling Social Democratic Party which held a meeting of its leadership over the weekend.

Both the Czech and Polish parliaments were this week debating the controversial privatisation of the Czech oil and gas giant Unipetrol to Poland's PKN Orlen. Critics claim that PKN acquired a controlling stake in Unipetrol earlier this year only after bribes were paid to senior Czech government officials, a charge they flatly deny.

Cabarets, masked balls, dancing halls and high society events - life was fun for the young social elite in the roaring 1920s - a time of abandonment and elegance in the years before the Great Depression. Between 1900 and 1930 Prague was gradually transformed from a local provincial town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a self-confident modern metropolis. An exhibition of picture posters which has just opened at the Municipal House in Prague offers unique evidence of this change.

Fans of crime fiction will probably already be familiar with the books of Irish thriller writer John Connolly, the bestselling author whose novels blend the macabre and the supernatural. Over five books, Connolly's character, the private eye Charlie Parker has come up against some pretty nasty individuals and he again faces difficult tests in Connolly's newest release "The Black Angel". Part of the thriller is set in the Czech Republic and was actually inspired by a famous ossuary - a bone chapel - in Sedlec at Kutna Hora.

The sound of sirens - the Czech Republic's early-warning system - is one that many people have come to dread. Some remember the sound from the time of the floods three years ago, but today fears are just as strong of a man-made catastrophe. Since the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London the fear of a possible bomb attack is never far from people's minds. Although the Czech intelligence services say they have no indication of any imminent threat to this country, the Czech government wants to make sure that the country's police and rescue

It's been 150 years since David Livingstone discovered a waterfall which the local natives called "the smoke that thunders" and christened it "Victoria Falls" after his queen. But the first ever map of the great falls was drawn by a Czech explorer, Dr Emil Holub who arrived at Victoria Falls twenty years later. To commemorate the event, a bust of Emil Holub has been unveiled in Livingstone, the Zambian city bearing the name of Holub's predecessor and role model.

Legendary Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal will be buried in Israel on Friday, after a life-time spent bringing war criminals to justice. Tributes to Mr Wiesenthal have been pouring in since his death on Tuesday, including many from the Czech Republic, which lost 80,000 Jews to the Holocaust. Rob Cameron spoke to Tomas Kraus, chairman of the federation of Czech Jewish communities, about his legacy.

On Tuesday, New York's prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new exhibition called Prague, the Crown of Bohemia 1347-1437. After Charles IV was crowned king of Bohemia in 1347, he strived to turn Prague into a cultural rival of Paris and Rome. Hundreds of artists came to the city and other towns in Bohemia during the reign of the last rulers of the Luxembourg dynasty in Central Europe - Charles IV and his two sons Wenceslas IV and Sigismund. The exhibition at the Met features over 200 examples of their work.

The papers have been full of it - the fugitive Czech millionaire Radovan Krejcir sunning himself on a beach in the Seychelles, leaving five star hotels and posing jauntily for Czech reporters - safe in the knowledge that he has managed to escape the long arm of the law. The man is wanted for extensive fraud and conspiracy to murder and the Czech police and foreign ministry officials continue in their efforts to secure his extradition from the Seychelles. The fact that Mr. Krejcir acquired Seychelles citizenship allegedly for the price of 25,000