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The Chamber of Deputies lost one of its best known MPs at the weekend when Hana Marvanova, a deputy for the right-of-centre coalition Freedom Union, announced she was stepping down to spend more time with her family. Ms Marvanova gave birth to a son - her third child - on Tuesday, and she told reporters that looking after three children and fulfilling her duties in the lower house was no longer possible.

Monday, September 22nd, is European Day without Cars. Several towns and cities around the Czech Republic have officially joined the event but the capital Prague so far has seemed just as congested as on any other day. Unimpressed by the attitude of the city authorities, several NGO's launched a project called "Auto-Mat" in the long run tries to offer alternatives to car transport in the city. Radio Prague spoke to Petr Stepanek of the civic association Oziveni which joined the "Auto-Mat" project and she asked him first to explain more

This week is European Mobility Week, and several towns and cities in the Czech Republic have agreed to take the initiative to look into the different aspects of urban mobility, through discussion programmes, lectures, and special events. Last year 320 cities from 21 European countries participated in the campaign and the Czech Environment Ministry, together with the Foreign Ministry, supported it for the first time. Eva Veverkova is the campaign's chief co-ordinator in the Czech Republic:

It may go into the book of world records as one of the largest gatherings of heart transplant patients ever. Cardiologists called a meeting for the press to meet transplant survivors in hopes to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation. The meeting also marked the 500th heart transplant performed in the Czech Republic. 300 are still alive.

This week, the Czech National Property Fund, that manages state owned property, has introduced a new project to establish a legal framework for Public Private Partnership. In essence, Public Private Partnership is a partnership between the public and private sectors to develop public infrastructure. Although this type of financing of public assets is not completely new in the Czech Republic, there is a lot the country can learn from the experience of others.

Exactly six months after seventy-five Cuban dissidents were thrown into prison to serve six to twenty-eight year sentences, a new Czech-based organisation has been launched to support dissidents under the Castro regime. The International Committee for Democracy in Cuba was formed under the initiative of former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and currently has thirteen members, including former Czech foreign ministers, prime ministers and members of parliament, most of whom are already involved in Cuban issues and have been working with representatives

The recent case of a ten year old boy who ended up in hospital with a nervous breakdown as his divorced parents battled over visiting rights, has fuelled awareness among Czechs of the different ways in which a child can be abused by those closest to them. It was only after the fall of the communist regime that social workers and the media could speak openly about the extent of child abuse in this country. Even so many Czechs still find it hard to accept the fact that children who ostensibly appear to be well looked after may be suffering private

This week 350 athletes from nearly 40 countries as far afield as Japan and Canada have come together in the Czech Republic. The Czech Paralympic Committee is hosting the Open European Cycling Championships for athletes with disabilities, one of the most significant cycling events to be hosted by the Czech Republic since the fall of communism. David Vaughan brings the following report.

The summer might be coming to an end but one man who might be still feeling the heat is Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla. With a majority of one seat in parliament, he's trying to push forward a radical (well radical-ish) package of spending cuts, pass a budget with a record deficit of 118 billion crowns, and now faces a vote of no-confidence from the opposition Civic Democrats. Things aren't being made any easier by one Josef Hojdar, an MP for Mr Spidla's Social Democrat party. Mr Hojdar says he won't support the reform package, a decision which

In recent years, computer skills have gone from being a great asset to a basic requirement, and nowadays it's very hard to get a job if you are not computer literate. While more and more people can use computers, employers in the Czech Republic complain that many job applicants still do not know how to write a document or create a simple table on computers.