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The international press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders published their annual "Press Freedom Index" this week, after surveying the media in 168 countries throughout the world. The Czech Republic, surprisingly, ranked fifth - sandwiched between the Netherlands and Estonia. But does this country really boast such a high level of press freedom? Rob Cameron has this report.

On Tuesday the first ever festival of comic art in Prague - KomiksFEST2006 - officially opened at the Svetozor art theater, just a stone's throw from Wenceslas Square. Twelve locations around the city will host KomiksFEST events, which run the gamut from exhibitions of graphic art to movies and plays. The festival highlights the work of Czech artists like Jiri Grus and Karel Jerie, and is designed to attract comics lovers as well as the general public.

Organized crime has an increasing number of contacts amongst the judiciary in this country - that's according to a new report released by the Czech counter-intelligence service BIS this week. Given its severity the 2005 annual BIS report has not gone unnoticed, though its content leaves some specifics unanswered.

A number of years ago the Czech band Krystof - led by frontman Richard Krajco - broke onto the Czech pop scene with their first album "Magneticke Pole" (Magnetic Fields), their single "Lolita" bringing them overnight success. Since then, the band has released four more albums, including the critically acclaimed "Mikrokosmos". But, none was perhaps more anticipated than its latest "Rubikon", which some Czech critics are already calling one of Krystof's best. The lead single has climbed to third spot on the charts (in popular TV music programme Eso)

CzechTourism is - as the name suggests - the Czech Republic's tourist board. As well as its headquarters here in Prague, it has many offices around the world, everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. Last week I paid a visit to the London branch of CzechTourism, where I met its director, Jan Mlcak. I began by asking him about the office's activities.

It's been nine years since Czech readers have had a chance to buy a new novel by Milan Kundera, but at last the most eagerly anticipated release will hit bookstore shelves this week. The novel that made Milan Kundera an international success, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," has been published in Czech by Brno-based Atlantis Publishing.

The right-of-centre Civic Democrats enjoyed wide success in municipal elections at the weekend, coming first in many of the country's major cities and towns. But, nowhere was their success more pronounced than in the Czech capital, where the party - led by Mayor Pavel Bem - clinched an unprecedented 54 percent of the vote. The result gave the Civic Democrats an outright majority, 42 of a possible 70 seats on the assembly that elects the mayor and city council. The result means that after an eight-year-long coalition with the leftist Social Democrats,

Czechs are digesting the results of the weekend's Senate and municipal elections. The vote appeared to be a resounding victory for the right-of-centre Civic Democrats, who went through to the second round in 26 of the 27 Senate mandates being contested, and will also gain more council seats than any other political party. But will the results loosen the deadlock in national politics?

The Velvet Revolution may have led to the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989 but it was not until this weekend that the Communists lost their hold over a small village in the north-east of the country. Close to 80 percent of the electorate of Sonov went to the polls to give a new party a chance to bring about change. Dita Asiedu reports:

This week, Hungarians are commemorating the anniversary of their dramatic anti-Soviet uprising exactly 50 years ago. On October 23, 1956 a pro-democracy rally brought 200 000 people into the streets of Budapest, singing national songs and destroying a statue of Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. Soviet tanks were forced to retreat from Budapest, but when they returned one week later the blow was devastating: reform Prime Minister Imre Nagy was arrested and executed, as were hundreds of other reformers.