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An 87-year-old former “people’s prosecutor” has entered prison to begin a six-year sentence for her role in one of the most notorious Communist show-trials of the 1950s, in which democratic politician Milada Horáková was sent to the gallows on trumped up charges. Ludmila Brožová-Polednová voluntarily entered prison on Thursday evening, and will now undergo medical tests to ascertain whether she is fit to serve her sentence.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the scene of the most deadly conflict since WWII, and it has become the subject of several exhibitions around Prague in the last month. The exhibitions focus particularly on women and children, and on the work of Czech charities in a country that Joseph Conrad famously called “The Heart of Darkness”.

Leaders of the European Union are set to begin a two-day meeting in Brussels aimed at agreeing a strategy for tackling the global economic crisis. The meeting’s being chaired by Czech prime minister Mirek Topolánek in his capacity as president of the European Council, and the Czech Republic is under a lot of pressure to provide leadership at a time when the EU is suffering from falling production and rising unemployment.

A welcome feature of the Prague metro system – its freedom from passenger turnstiles – is coming to the end of the line. The capital city’s transport authority says non-paying passengers are simply costing it too much and now wants to bring back the barriers - a former feature of the metro in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, which has been shown in the One World film festival, focuses on the work of the permanent tribunal established in 2002 and most recently in the news for issuing an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. However, the court, based in the Hague, is not without its critics, and countries such as the US, China and Russia have not signed up. After a screening on Tuesday night, I asked the documentary’s director Pamela Yates whether there was any evidence the existence

The coalition government of Mirek Topolánek is losing ground in the Chamber of Deputies. A day after a media scandal involving the prime minister’s advisor, the opposition went on the offensive on Tuesday, saying they want to remove the government in a vote of no-confidence. The coalition had to admit its weak position, and withdrew votes on allowing a US radar base from the agenda in the lower house, fearing they would not muster the necessary votes.

Wednesday sees the release of Michelin’s Main Cities in Europe, a guidebook which rates Europe’s best restaurants. Last year Prague’s Allegro, located in the Four Seasons Hotel, became the first in a post communist country to clinch a coveted star. This year it retained its position, while numerous other restaurants were in the running. Another that clinched the prestigious star was Maze, in the Hotel Hilton, until recently run by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

Undercover in Tibet, one of over 120 films at this year’s One World festival, features the testimonies of victims of Chinese repression, including a Tibetan monk who describes being tortured, a woman forced to undergo sterilisation and former nomads made to live in isolated compounds. Those interviews were secretly recorded by Tash Despa, who escaped from Tibet in his late teens and returned, on a UK passport, a decade later. Ahead of a screening of the documentary, I asked Tash Despa how much danger he had been in while filming in the tightly

The Czech government is embroiled in a fresh scandal which could further weaken its shaky position in the lower house and hurt its image with the public. Czech TV revealed on Monday that Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek had indirectly asked one of the TV station’s reporters not to air a report that would expose a former Social Democrat MP who defected from the party and has since supported the government in a number of key votes.

Not long ago, a chat over a few beers about the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field on animals got a group of Czech zoologists thinking. Turning to Google satellite pictures for answers, they saw something that had gone unnoticed throughout thousands of years of animal husbandry, that herds of large mammals align themselves north-south when grazing – wind and terrain permitting. Now Dr. Hynek Burda, one of those involved in the earlier finding, has made the news once again by discovering that electrical power lines disrupt this instinct.