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This week has been a good one for Czech anti-smoking campaigners. On Tuesday the High Court in Brno supported a lawsuit taken by one tenant in an apartment building to ban his neighbours from smoking on the stairwells and corridors. It is a ruling that has for the first time backed the right of non-smokers to prevent people lighting up in their environment. Now, a proposed new law is to come before parliament, which aims to make it harder to smoke in public places.

Yesterday we reported on a shortage of tone wood which has for centuries been harvested in South Bohemia to make pianos that even Mozart himself played in Vienna. As a matter of fact, the Czech Museum of Music owns a piano which Mozart played in Prague, and the instrument is now on display in the Czech capital.

The city of Brno has relented. Brno's city council yesterday approved a plan to return the Villa Tugendhat, a UNESCO landmark, to the children of the original owners. The path to giving back the historic villa, however, won't be so simple.

In 2002, the Prague district of Karlin was one of the worst-affected by flooding on the Vltava river. Restoration of damaged buildings continues to this day, but Prague planners see a bright future for the area, including parks, new office and residential buildings, and two new islands.

The deep forests of the Sumava Mountains in South Bohemia used to abound in spruce trees whose wood was of such high quality that it was used for the production of musical instruments in workshops around Europe. But these legendary tone spruce trees are becoming increasingly rare owing to changes in the environment and forest management.

104 of the world's countries are now members of the International Criminal Court or ICC, the tribunal established in 2002 to try genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. They include 26 of the 27 members of the European Union, with one notable exception - the Czech Republic. The country signed up to the ICC in 1999, but parliament has yet to ratify it. On Monday four Czech NGOs released a statement criticising this fact, including the League of Human Rights. Radio Prague spoke to the League's Jan Kratochvil.

The subject of global warming seems to be rarely out of the news these days, with even George Bush - known to critics as the "Toxic Texan" - talking of "the serious challenge of global climate change" in his recent State of the Union address. One of many studies on the issue is currently being prepared by Professor Sid Redner of Boston University, who has been using data on record temperatures from Prague's Clementinum weather station. I asked him why.

Someone has damaged a valuable historical artifact on Prague's Charles Bridge. While the sculpture itself remains intact, the golden lettering surrounding the figure was partly destroyed. The police are investigating, but the incident is raising questions about how best to protect the historical treasures of Prague's streets.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Prague on Friday to try and revive talks on the European Constitution agreement. The ratification process was put on hold after the document was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands. Germany now holds the EU's rotating presidency and its main goal is to resume discussion. But Ms Merkel did not get the support she needed in the Czech capital:

Czechs were shocked on Sunday night to hear of the death of Karel Svoboda, one of the country's most popular songwriters. Svoboda - who had written hundreds of hits and film scores - was found dead in the garden of his villa outside Prague. A police investigation into his death suggests he took his own life.