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Since the Velvet Revolution, the average Czech household’s tap water consumption has fallen by more than 50 percent. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Czech Republic is now one of the biggest consumers of bottled water in Europe. With empty water bottles creating hundreds of tonnes of waste a year, not everyone is happy about the trend.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera is regarded as something of a modern-day national treasure – despite the fact that he has lived outside of the Czech Republic for decades. But the author of such books as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Joke has now been accused of reporting a young soldier to the communist authorities – something that led the man involved to be imprisoned.

In less than three month’s time, the Czech Republic is going to take up the EU presidency. It’s a major diplomatic challenge and there are dozens of practical problems to contend with, such as securing enough interpreters for the meetings in Brussels. The head of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Interpretation, Marco Benedetti, visited Prague last week in order to discuss the final preparations for interpretation during the Czech presidency of the EU. Ruth Fraňková asked him what exactly these arrangements involved:

A number of Czech politicians, from both sides of the political spectrum, have come under scrutiny past and present for questionable ties to behind-the-scenes lobbyists, controversial businessmen, and shadowy figures with ties to organised crime. Now the issue of the company politicians keep has been raised again, following last week’s murder of entrepreneur Václav Kočka by Bohumír Ďuričko, a businessman with a shady past. The killing happened at a restaurant where they both attended opposition leader Jiri Paroubek’s book-launch.

The Czech Doctors’ Association is ringing the alarm. It says that Czech hospitals may not be able to guarantee the current quality of health care for much longer due to a lack of doctors and nurses. More and more Czech doctors are accepting job offers from medical institutions in Western Europe, particularly Germany and Austria, where they claim to have better facilities, higher salaries and more respect.

All this week Prague has been playing host to the sixth annual Bollywood festival of Indian film. The festival has grown from an informal gathering of film students into a major cultural event, echoing the transition of Bollywood itself into a mainstream art form with mass appeal across the globe. And, as Rob Cameron reports, the special guest at this year’s festival is a cult figure for a generation of Czechs.

New details have come to light on how Czechoslovakia’s communist era secret police, the StB, spied on the regime’s opponents, including the future president Václav Havel. The details were published on Thursday in the daily Mladá Fronta Dnes, and come from StB records currently being digitalised by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.

The Czech Science Academy’s Environmental Committee has issued a damning report, accusing the Prague City Council of seeking to develop Prague’s green spaces and thus seriously damage the city’s already polluted air.

EU ministers meeting in emergency talks in Luxembourg on Tuesday agreed on steps to stabilise the situation for European banks, hit or under threat by the global financial crisis. At the heart of the agreement: a pledge by individual countries to raise the guarantee for customers’ savings accounts to a minimum of 50,000 euros, around double the amount currently provided in most countries including the Czech Republic. The move is aimed at calming savings account holders and, by turn, renewing confidence in banks hit hard in the on-going crisis.

A number of hugely important historical moments have been remembered in the Czech Republic this year: the communist takeover of 1948, the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, and the signing of the Munich agreement in 1938. But there is also one anniversary that Czechs can mark with pleasure – the foundation of Czechoslovakia 90 years ago, on October 28th 1918. Among the institutions marking that day is Prague Castle, which has organised several events.