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A gruesome find has made headlines in the Czech Republic: police have uncovered human remains in what appears to be a mass grave in a field near the village of Dobronin, in the Jihlava region. Fifteen Germans are said to have been brutally murdered there by the locals in the turbulent days after the end of World War II. The discovery is the first piece of evidence pertaining to this long-forgotten massacre and has once again re-opened a dark chapter of Czech-German history.

Although the Czech Republic has been hit by it own floods, the country responded fast to the much greater inundation in Pakistan. We look at the Czech aid effort so far.

One of the country’s most respected poets and literary scholars, Ludvík Kundera, died on Tuesday at the age of 90. The writer (a cousin of the internationally-renowned author Milan Kundera) had a wide scope, writing poetry, drama, prose and translating from several languages. Last year he received the Jaroslav Seiffert prize for life-long achievement.

The Czech Army, which went fully professional five years ago, is preparing major changes in military rank, which will mainly affect lower-level officers. Under an amendment passed last year, on January 1 the army will reintroduce ranks from private to sergeant, mirroring armies in fellow NATO countries. But the changes mean that some 14,000 Czech soldiers will suffer demotion.

Every year the Czech police are alerted to around 15,000 stolen cars, though on average only around 3,000 of them get returned to their owners. Now the police may get help in tracking them down from an unexpected quarter: the country’s petrol station owners are introducing a new monitoring system to alert officers to stolen vehicles.

A war memorial with a difference was unveiled this weekend at a famous Napoleonic battlefield near Brno. The life size bronze statue stands out immediately from similar memorials to war heroes and generals from the fact that it features a horse with no one in the saddle.

An era has come to an end with the demise of Americké listy, the leading Czech-language newspaper in the United States. Its publishers Petr and Vera Bísek have decided to call time on the bi-monthly publication, which succeeded a paper started in the mid 1960s by another Czech émigré, Frank Švehla. The couple, who are in their late 60s, live in New York state but are currently visiting family at a village near Plzeň. On the phone from there, Petr Bísek explained why they had taken the decision to close Americké listy.

The number of one-person households in the Czech Republic is on the rise. In fact, according to government figures released this week, one in four Czech households is single-occupant. In 2002, roughly 900,000 of the country’s population lived in one-person households. But by last year that figure had risen by over a quarter of a million. In the capital, the trend is even more pronounced: forty percent of Prague’s residents live by themselves. Martin Potůček, head of the Center for Social and Economic Strategies at Charles University, speaks about

At least eighty Czechs remain stranded in the Himalayan region of Ladakh where flash floods killed 156 people at the weekend. Most of them have already contacted the Czech embassy in New Delhi and are waiting to get on flights home, but the fate of a small group who were travelling on their own remains uncertain. Radio Prague called the Czech ambassador to India Miloslav Stašek for the latest news.

After seeing its budget reduced by over 150 million Czech crowns, the foreign ministry is being forced to make significant cuts in staff. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg met with Václav Klaus on Thursday to discuss implementing the cuts, following an announcement last week that some Czech embassies would have to be closed down. But, although cost-cutting is now the operative word in the public sector, the foreign minister’s plan has come under fire from deputies and experts alike.