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Whatever the outcome of today's vote, one thing is obvious: the Czech presidency will not be the same as it was under Vaclav Havel. Both candidates - Vaclav Klaus and Jan Sokol - have emphasised that they would be different heads of state than their predecessor. In exclusive interviews for Radio Prague, the two presidential hopefuls outlined their visions for the Czech presidency.

Vaclav Klaus and Jan Sokol stood for the Czech presidency on Friday morning, uncertain about their chances of winning the support of the majority of both houses of parliament. But, as the result of a recent public opinion poll suggests, if the elections were held through a direct popular ballot, it is clear who the winner would be. Dita Asiedu reports:

It's one day to go until the country's 281 MPs and senators meet at Prague Castle, for parliament's third and final attempt to elect a successor to Vaclav Havel. This time there are just two presidential candidates - former prime minister Vaclav Klaus, nominated by the opposition Civic Democrats, and university professor Jan Sokol, the official candidate of the ruling coalition. But unfortunately for those growing weary of this agonising struggle to find a new president, it's still impossible to say who - if anyone - is going to win. My colleague

The Czech Television Council on Wednesday failed to elect a new general director for the country's public television network. Apart from prolonging instability at Czech Television, this development has evoked grave doubts regarding the competence of the Council itself and the existing law on public broadcasting.

Jan Sokol, the presidential candidate of the Czech coalition government, will vie for the presidency with former Czech prime minister Vaclav Klaus in Friday's third attempt to elect a successor to Vaclav Havel. But Mr Sokol is not as well known as his competitor: while Mr Klaus served as prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 1997, Mr Sokol held some less prominent political offices in the 1990s, and spent most of the decade engaging in academic pursuits. So who is Jan Sokol?

A three year sentence has been handed down to a 20-year-old man for making a series of hoax telephone calls claiming there were bombs at Ruzyne airport. The man made a total of four hoax calls last summer, forcing airport authorities to evacuate the building and cancel several flights.

Tuesday is the fifty-fifth anniversary of what the Communists called Victorious February. On the 25th February 1948, the Communist Party chief and hardline Stalinist, Klement Gottwald, announced to ecstatic crowds on Prague's Wenceslas Square that Czechoslovakia's government had resigned, and that his Communists were now in power. This was the last nail in the coffin of Czechoslovakia's fragile post-war democracy, and the start of forty years of hardline communism. A service to mark one of the bleakest anniversaries in modern Czech history was

On Monday another fatal accident involving a military aircraft happened in the Czech Republic. This is the twenty fourth fatality in a string of airforce accidents in the past decade, which have claimed the lives of some of the country's elite pilots.

Last week saw bad news for customers of the Ostrava-based bank Union banka, after the cash-strapped bank announced Friday it had shut the doors of more than 100 branches and stopped payments. The decision left some 250,000 customers and businesses unable to access their accounts, at least for the time being, and the bank is now teetering on the edge of collapse. The bank's majority shareholder Invesmart is currently hoping to reach a compromise with the Czech government.

Czech politics has been hit by a series of bugging allegations in recent days, all involving members of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and mobile phones from the country's largest operator, Eurotel. But it has not yet been confirmed whether the cases actually involve bugging or are instead the result of human or technical errors.