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A month after the Civic Democrat minority government took office, differences between the ruling Civic Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats couldn't run deeper, fuelled by an increasingly heated row over alleged wiretaps. The current government - relying on new information from last week - has continued to press the suspicion that wiretaps could have been abused under the former government to "spy" on their political rivals. But, those are allegations that the Social Democrats have vehemently denied.

Heightened anti-terrorist measures, a wiretapping scandal and an uncertain political situation - the news from the Czech Republic is pretty glum these days but over the weekend a blonde, blue-eyed 18-year-old provided a welcome diversion from the country's problems: she became the first ever Czech beauty queen to win the Miss World Beauty Contest founded in 1951 and held this year in the Polish capital Warsaw.

The Prague Zoo celebrated its 75th year in style this week, with festivities coinciding with the national holiday of St Wenceslas Day on September 28th. As Patrick Ryan reports it was well worth the visit.

Viktor Kozeny, the so-called Pirate of Prague, appeared one step closer to extradition to the United States on Thursday. A court in the Bahamas - Mr Kozeny's adopted home - confirmed June's decision to deport him to the U.S. to face charges of bribing senior government officials in Azerbaijan. However Czech investors allegedly defrauded by Mr Kozeny in the 1990s are still no closer to seeing their money.

A new exhibit at the Polish Institute entitled Confrontation 6 features the works of two artists: the Polish painter Maciej Swieszewski, and the Czech sculptor Ivan Tlusty. Visitors will find pieces of what can be described as opposite genres, by artists of the same generation from neighboring countries.

One of the steps taken by the Czech Republic to come to terms with its communist past were so-called 'lustrace', or screening laws. They were meant to prevent former communist secret agents and other people associated with the former regime from taking government and senior civil service posts. But it appears that some former secret police, or StB, agents have managed to slip through the net. It has just emerged there are far more former agents in the police than previously believed - 800 rather than a few dozen. Dita Asiedu reports:

Anyone interested in archaeology is likely to be attracted to a new exhibition just opening at the Prague City Museum titled "Through the Valley of Shadows". The exhibit - which took a year to prepare - features samples of a number of Prague burial sites dating from as far back as the Stone Age to the early Middle Ages. It shows how ancient cultures - German, Celtic, and Slavic - dealt with death in practical as well as symbolic terms.

Show trials featuring trumped up charges and fabricated confessions remain one of the strongest symbols of Communist state repression throughout the former Eastern Bloc. Czechoslovakia's most infamous show trials involved senior Communist Rudolf Slansky and resistance leader Milada Horakova, both of whom were given the death penalty. But not all defendants were so high-profile: a newly discovered recording reflects Communist Party efforts to use the courts to crush a whole class - relatively wealthy farmers.

More light was shed on the alleged terrorist threat against the Czech Republic on Tuesday, with claims that a Prague-based Albanian drug dealer was a crucial link in a chain of events that led to the current security scare. At the same time, excerpts from Pakistani leader General Musharraf's newly published diaries reveal that Al Qaeda planned to hijack a Czech passenger plane in 2002 to attack Heathrow Airport.

For a number of years now visitors in Prague have been able to view public sculpture in and around the monumental Wenceslas Square throughout the summer months. Titled Sculpture Grande, the exhibition features truly massive works that rise up above the traffic; this year it particularly made headlines through work by legendary American artist Dennis Oppenheim. Generally, public reaction has been positive: most told Radio Prague they enjoyed the show overall, stressing that it was a great opportunity to view abstract art.