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The case of the little boy abused by his mother is beginning to have political ramifications, two weeks after the seven-year-old was found bound and naked in a broom cupboard. Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek says he wants new legislation to improve the protection of children, while the education minister is calling for tighter controls over home schooling in the Czech Republic.

Experts predicted that a new record could be set on Sunday when a work by the Czech-born abstract artist Frantisek Kupka was going under the hammer in Prague. They were right: the oil on canvas was sold to an anonymous bidder for 13.4 million crowns (around 642,500 dollars), a price that would have been unthinkable on the Czech market a decade ago.

Last week was no doubt an important one for Czech mountaineering fans: two Czech climbers in separate expeditions conquered Mt Everest: at 8,848 metres the world's tallest peak. Klara Polackova made headlines first last Wednesday, when she become the first Czech female to summit Everest and two days later the peak was reached by the highly-prolific Pavel Bem, Prague's lord mayor.

It is one of the most shocking cases in Czech criminal history - eight year old Ondra was found naked, bound and dehydrated in a cupboard under the stairs, abused by his own mother, Klara Mauerova, a single mother taking care of three children. It then emerged that Ondra's thirteen year old sister Anna was a child without an identity whom Klara had taken under her wing. All three children were placed in a children's home from which Anna mysteriously disappeared.

Cracks seem to be appearing in the three-party ruling coalition over a number of issues, but are they deep enough to cause a real crisis? A gulf seems to be opening up between the Green Party and their coalition allies - the Civic Democrats and the Christian Democrats. But with a vote on crucial tax reforms due in early June, the coalition has no choice but to maintain a semblance of unity.

A hospital in West Bohemia experienced a dramatic night this week when its generators gave way during a local blackout. Medical staff manually operated life-saving equipment for two long hours and managed to save all 300 patients. The local governor has now ordered a detailed report on why the hospital's emergency power supply failed.

The story of eight year old Ondra who was abused by his mother - found tied up, naked in a small windowless cupboard under the stairs - has taken a strange new twist. Attention has now shifted to his allegedly adopted sister Anna who was found to be legally "non-existent". No one knows who she is, where she came from and how she came to be in the care of Klara Mauerova, the woman who is now accused of abusing her own son. Anna disappeared from the orphanage where she and her two brothers were placed and has now been missing for six days.

The dispute surrounding the Temelin nuclear power plant in South Bohemia is very much back on the agenda. Last week Austrian anti-nuclear demonstrators blockaded a number of border crossings, the latest in a series of protests. They say they will close down the entire border if the Austrian government fails to file an international lawsuit against the Czech Republic over Temelin. This week Vienna sent a diplomatic note to Prague, protesting at what Austria claims is the Czechs' failure to comply with the 2000 Melk Agreement on safety at Temelin.

If you listen to news programmes on national broadcaster Cesky Rozhlas (Czech Radio) you will frequently hear pop songs between the news bulletins, sports reports and so on. The format of one-hour, two-hour or longer news programmes, common in many English speaking countries, simply doesn't have an equivalent on prime-time national radio here in the Czech Republic. But that is about to change, with the launch on Friday of a programme called Radioforum, on Czech Radio's main station Radiozurnal.

Nuselsky most is one of the Czech capital's most important bridges; it carries the metro to the huge Prague 4 area, as well as providing one of the city's main road connections. But it also has a darker side: it has become notorious for suicide, with hundreds dying here since the bridge was built in the 1970s. The authorities say the problem has recently been getting even worse - and have just announced a new plan to deter would-be suicides.