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As the country’s centre-right parties hammer out an agreement on a future government one message is coming across loud and clear – whatever the deal - it will involve severe cost-cutting measures in the months and years to come. Plans on the table envisage job cuts, salary cuts, halting state investment projects and, where possible, merging departments or ministries.

One of the greats of Czech film and theatre, Ladislav Smoljak, died at the age of 78 at the weekend. As a director, screenwriter and actor, Smoljak, brought his special humour to the stage and screen over more than four decades. He will perhaps be best remembered as one of the creators of the fictional Czech character Jára Cimrman.

President Václav Klaus has tasked the leader of the Civic Democratic Party, Petr Nečas, to try and form the country’s next government, roughly a week after the general election. Despite finishing second, the Civic Democrats – together with newcomers TOP 09 and Public Affairs – have the most realistic chance of forming a majority government. But they will have to make progress quickly: as the president made clear on Friday he expects Mr Nečas to report back to him in two weeks.

Friday is the big day for the group of youngsters selected to present their issue-oriented projects to the Czech Senate. This is the idea of the Citizen Project, the brainchild of the civic organisation Civitas. A while ago I spoke with the executive director of Civitas in the Czech Republic, Ivana Havlínová, to find out more about the project and the children’s political concerns.

Heavy rainfall has brought flooding back to the Czech Republic just as some localities were getting back to normal. Many of the same areas in Moravia hit two weeks ago were affected again with three lives lost, but flood warning have also been widened to new areas in the west of the country. The latest floods have left a trail of damage and desperation in their wake.

Three Czech centre-right parties - the Civic Democrats, TOP 09 and the centrist Public Affairs – on Wednesday signed an agreement to create a centre-right coalition of fiscal responsibility. The move was sanctioned by President Václav Klaus, who has so far held off from naming a prime minister designate.

Good news for Beatles fans – a new exhibition at the Czech Museum of Music opens on Thursday evening featuring the music and the men – the museum’s even borrowed George Harrison’s banjo, one of John Lennon’s shoes, and lots more Beatles memorabilia. The exhibition’s highly interactive however - there’s even a little recording studio where you can try belting out Beatles songs. Earlier we spoke to the exhibition’s curator, Dagmar Fialová.

One of the people aboard the so-called Freedom Fleet, which was trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, was Czech TV cameraman Jan Línek. He was travelling on one of the smaller boats, several hundred metres away from the Mavi Marmara where several people were killed during a raid by Israeli naval commandoes. Jan Línek was released on Tuesday and returned to Prague later that day.

Prague’s Divadlo na Zábradlí is known mainly for staging former President Havel’s plays but in the last couple of years, it has also focused on producing English-language plays. Thursday will see the premiere of a play acted in English with Czech subtitles on the theatre’s main stage. The play, written by a young Polish author Dorota Maslowska, has a rather complicated title: A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians in English with Czech Subtitles.

The hedonism of today’s wealthy young Russians is the focus of an exhibition of photographs by Antonín Kratochvíl which has just opened at Prague’s Mánes gallery. In Moscow Nights, he captures scenes of decadence as the city’s “golden youth” cavort in night clubs and even on Stalin’s old yacht. Just ahead of the show’s opening, I asked the great Czech photographer what had drawn him to that subject.