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Award-winning director and Czech native Alice Nellis has a new play making its debut this Sunday at the Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague's Old Town. Her films Eeny Meeny and Some Secrets both won a host of trophies, but since 2002 she's stayed away from the silver screen and worked mostly on stage. Her newest work, titled Zaplavy or "Floods" in English, a comedy inspired in part by the catastrophic floods of 2002, is her first original production to appear onstage.

The Czech Republic has an impressive record in innovative medical research. For the last six years, laboratories around the world have successfully been offering a new form of treatment of diabetes that could lead to a life without the daily injections of insulin. In the experimental procedure called islet transplantation, healthy islets from the pancreas of deceased donors are transferred into diabetic patients. But it was not until a Czech team of scientists recently proposed to put small particles of iron into the islets that these could be

Many Indonesians arrived in the Czech Republic during the 1960s, and later political changes in their home country prevented them from ever returning. In the last few years more Indonesians have come to study or work here, but it's not a one-way street. Each year six or more Czechs travel to study in the Asian Islands on scholarships provided by Indonesia. Czechs here in Prague can also take free lessons in Gamelan, native Indonesian music, organized by the country's embassy.

Every year Prague's Summer Shakespeare Festival draws thousands of visitors to Prague Castle, to view Shakespeare productions on summer evenings under the open sky. Notable productions in the past have included Romeo and Juliet or King Lear - starring the US-based actor Jan Triska.

A new exhibition of photographs opened in the town of Broumov this weekend, depicting the region's unique geography and cultural heritage. Broumov and the surrounding villages were once home to a sizeable German community, almost all of whom were expelled after the war. The pictures, by photographer Hana Jakrlova, record the echoes of a lost community. Rob Cameron was at the opening and has this report.

Tuesday was Europe Day, marking May 9, 1950 when the German-born French politician Robert Schuman made a declaration on the creation of an organised Europe which is now regarded as the beginning of today's European Union. One of the main events around the continent this year was a project called Café d'Europe, in which writers appeared at coffee houses in all the EU's capital.

After more than 20 years away from competitive play in Prague, Martina Navratilova has won her opening doubles match at the Prague Open. Navratilova and Barbora Strycova defeated Olga Blahotova and Ahsha Rolle 6:2, 6:3 in just over one hour of play.

On Monday the Czech Republic commemorated the 61st anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Over the weekend, ceremonies were held all over the country in honour of those Czechs who lost their lives, and people celebrated the end of over six years of occupation. Amongst the events which took place was the full military burial of wartime Prime Minister Alois Elias in Prague, 64 years after his execution by the Nazis.

The National Archive in Prague recently received new material donated by Jana Kanska, the daughter of Milada Horakova, the Czech resistance movement hero in World War II found guilty on trumped-up charges of treason and plotting to overthrow the government by Czechoslovakia's Communist regime after the war. Famously, she showed tremendous courage and calm during a preposterous show-trial that, in the end saw her sentenced to death. Recent years have seen renewed historic interest in Milada Horakova's life, and with new material donated by her daughter

Every year, the Czech Foreign Ministry bestows the Gratias Agit award on select people who promote the good name of the Czech Republic abroad. The list of distinguished 2006 recipients includes the Czech-born former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, the world-class cross-country skier who won gold for the Czech Republic at the Turin Olympics, Katerina Neumannova, and the writer and humanitarian activist, Petra Prochazkova.