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It seems that once or twice a year a lottery jackpot so high comes along that it sways the country completely with jackpot fever, and now is such a time once again in the Czech Republic. As Radio Prague reports, Czechs will have till Wednesday to stock up on tickets. All it will take are six very lucky numbers to win, for someone to become very, very rich.

A recent case in which a mother abandoned her baby boy in a public place a few days after the birth, has reopened debate on the need for legislation which would enable pregnant women to give birth anonymously.

The Prague Castle Guard is in dire need of reform and its transformation process needs to be sped up. Czech President Vaclav Klaus made the call on Sunday, after a guardsman died from multiple gunshots to his head. Dita Asiedu reports:

In certainly one of the most dramatic criminal escapades in the Czech Republic in some time, a teenage boy from south Moravia achieved national notoriety this week when he held up a petrol station, took two people hostage and went on the run.

August 15 - 18 2002 are days that will remain in the minds of the people of Terezin for many years to come. Not only because they still have vivid memories of the horrors they endured when water from the Elbe and Ohre rivers swept through their property, but also because many are still living in temporary housing, waiting for their homes to dry out.

The oldest Czech soldier to fight in World War I, Alois Vocasek, died at the age of 107 on Saturday, the last survivor of the battle of Zborov in Ukraine. He was one of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks who broke with the Austrio-Hungarian monarchy to fight for the dream of a future Czechoslovak state. But, later the soldier tarnished his hero's reputation when he joined a Czech fascist organisation in the 1930s. Jan Velinger reports now on the controversial life and times of Alois Vocasek - the man - and the legionnaire.

Michal Zitko, the man who published the first complete Czech translation of Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" three years ago, has been sentenced in Prague for the second time. The first time he got a three-year suspended sentence for supporting or promoting a movement that aids the suppression of the rights of man. But the Supreme Court struck down the sentence stating the prosecution was unable to specify which movement Mr Zitko had allegedly promoted by publishing "Mein Kampf". The case was returned to the district court which this week passed

The Czech Republic has been hit by an unprecedented heat-wave in recent weeks with record temperatures across the country. Naturally, people have to drink more in this weather. Retailers report an increase in consumption of water and soft drinks, which very often come in non-returnable plastic bottles. So how is the country coping with so much discarded plastic? Katerina Dalesicka is a spokeswoman for EKO-KOM, which acts as a mediator between producers and distributors of goods with non-biodegradable packaging and individual communities.

The Technical Museum in Prague will be opening a new exhibition on Monday, looking at the life and works of famous German astronomer Johannes Kepler. The exhibition called "Kepler and Prague", is part of the international World View Network project and aims at informing the public about the ways in which famous astronomers have influenced our lives. More from the exhibition's curator Antonin Svejda:

August the 13th, 2002, is a day most people in Prague won't forget in a hurry - it began with wailing sirens and ended with the biggest deluge the Czech capital had seen in five hundred years. Exactly one year ago Prague woke up to find parts of the city underwater, and the effects of those "five hundred year" floods are still with us today.