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Sir Nicholas Winton, the British man whose foresight and determination helped save 669 mostly Jewish Czechoslovak children from the Holocaust, paid a visit to Prague this week, and was given a rapturous reception. Now 98, this was his fifth visit to the Czech capital since the extraordinary story of his heroic deeds first emerged in the late 1980s. That story was captured in the moving documentary The Power of Good, by director Matej Minac. He's been showing the film in schools around the country, and organised a special event at Prague's Congress

The parents of the two baby girls who were accidentally swapped at birth ten months ago are slowly coming to terms with the situation. Following the shock of the revelation that the child they'd loved and cared for was not their own they now face the daunting task of preparing to swap their children.

On Tuesday the Canadian Ambassador to Prague hosted a panel discussion at the Canadian residence recalling cooperation between Czech dissidents and Canadian officials in the years prior to the fall of communism. The event was most unusual as it brought together many of the former players: figures like Jan Urban and Jirina Siklova and former embassy officials.

This week, Prague has been playing host to leading Belarusian political dissident Aljaksandr Milinkevic as part of Forum 2000. The leader of the country's suppressed opposition movement 'Za Svobodu', or 'For Freedom' received a prestigious human rights prize from former president Vaclav Havel, and spoke to an audience consisting largely of Czech students about human rights in Belarus. The visit highlights the activism of Czech non-governmental organizations in promoting human rights in Europe's last dictatorship.

The Ekofilm festival is less about red carpets - and more about green politics than anything else. It was the first environment-focused film festival in Europe when it was set up back in 1974. This Monday, it got underway for the 33rd time, in the Southern Bohemian towns of Ceske Budejovice and Cesky Krumlov. And this year it's bigger than ever before - on the programme are concerts, seminars and an international film competition, all with a decidedly green twist. One of the institutions behind the festival is the Czech Environment Ministry. Jakub

In spite of all its beauty, the Czech Republic seems to be turning into a rather unpleasant place to live - at least in some respects. Two-thirds of Czechs are currently gasping for air as it gets more and more polluted. This and many other alarming facts have been highlighted in an annual report on the Czech environment, published recently by the Environment Ministry.

Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg revealed at the weekend that the Czech Republic is working on a plan to gradually withdraw most of its troops from Iraq. At present the Czech contingent consists of around 100 troops in Basra and a handful of military advisers in Baghdad. There's no date set yet for the Czech military presence to be reduced but the move is expected sometime after 2008.

In May of this year "Abstract composition" - an oil on canvas by the Czech-born abstract artist Frantisek Kupka - fetched a record price at auction 13.4 million crowns (over 642,000 US dollars). That record has now been broken - not surprisingly by another of Kupka's works.

Prague is full of old and beautiful churches, often crouching between hubbubs of modern social activity. Many regularly play host to concerts, maintaining through music a sense of continuity of past and present. But what about the city's many once significant churches that now are disused, or whose foundations lie beneath the trappings of the modern era? Well now a new exhibition at the Czech Museum of Music in Prague is using the same musical medium to resurrect the atmosphere of the city's bygone centres of worship. And the location couldn't

The story of two little girls who were exchanged at birth in a hospital mix-up and ended-up living with strangers has shocked the nation and evoked a wave of public sympathy for both sets of parents. On Thursday the two families met face to face for the first time as did the two little girls whose lives have become firmly intertwined.