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An exhibition in Prague has found an unusual way of countering the negative stereotype that members of the Roma community are often unemployed and live off state benefits. The exhibition of contemporary and forgotten Roma crafts highlights the fact that Roma on the Czech and Slovak lands made a living of hard manual labour.

Kralovo Pole in Brno is dealing with a delicate matter at the moment. The district has a large memorial to Soviet soldiers who fell in April 1945 while liberating the city from Nazi rule and were buried there. The memorial displayed Soviet symbols - the five-pointed star and the hammer and sickle - ever since it was erected in 1946. The symbols were removed in the early 1990s, but now the star has returned.

The sounds of the American anthem welcomed US President George W. Bush to Prague Castle on Tuesday for talks with his Czech counterpart, Vaclav Klaus, as well as with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek. The talks were the first stop of Mr Bush's European visit, which includes, first and foremost, attending the G8 Summit in Germany, where Mr Bush will head on Tuesday evening. Mr Bush's stop-off in Prague, though brief, was not unimportant: he was in the Czech capital to discuss a number of issues, among them a US request to station part of its

George Bush has been all over the media in the Czech Republic since he arrived on Monday evening. However, many ordinary Czechs are perhaps talking less about his visit and more about a bizarre gift Czech Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova was planning to give the US president - a CD supporting a planned US radar base on which the minister herself sings backing vocals.

This weekend, Central Bohemia was taken back to the fourteenth century as actors and politicians took part in a re-enactment of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV's traditional annual journey from Prague Castle to Karlstejn. The two-day procession was accompanied by various other events, introducing visitors to everyday life seven centuries ago. It was the first of an annual event launched by the governor of Central Bohemia, the aim of which is to help boost tourism in the region.

Tourists who chose this Monday and Tuesday for quick stopovers in Prague picked the worst possible time if they were hoping to see the area of Prague Castle. To put it bluntly, they won't. The Castle and more immediate surroundings have been closed off as part of intense security in place ahead of the arrival of US President George W. Bush. In terms of security, Prague has rarely seen anything like it (the closest perhaps being a NATO Summit in 2002).

The fastest growing sport in the world is modern and dynamic, though it is a sport you have probably never heard of. It's called racketlon, and it's had spectacular growth of 300% over the past three years, in terms of the number of official players. Racketlon is the youngest sibling of triathlon and decathlon, and combines four racquet sports played according to the increasing weight of racquets used - they are table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis. The Czech Republic is among the superpowers of racketlon.

Christian Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Jiri Cunek, who is suspected of having taken a half a million crown bribe while he served as mayor of Vsetin, is sinking deeper into trouble. Several of his chief witnesses have been accused of perjury -and the Prime Minister's patience with Mr Cunek appears to be at an end. However dismissing his deputy is proving harder than one might expect.

When Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings launched the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916, they set into motion a process that was to cause a revolution in European art, writing and theatre. This was the beginning of Dada. The Dadaists described their work as 'anti-art', defying the prevailing artistic conventions of the time and passionately opposing the First World War. Several of Dada's founding proponents had roots in Romania, but what is less well known is that Dada also had a number of intriguing Czech connections. This is to be one of the

Czech doctors are sounding alarm bells over unscientific treatment of serious illnesses. The Czech Medical Chamber has just released a list of selected alternative medicine practices on its website as part of a text called "The Risks of Alternative Medicine in Cancer Treatment". The organisation says it wants to warn patients against the unrealisable promises of "healers".