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The government has answered local council calls they be given more powers to stamp out gaming machine or so-called herna bars across the country. Proposed legal changes seek to put some order into a chaotic and poorly regulated multi-billion crown sector which many suspect is a front for criminal activity and money laundering.

Prague’s Galerie Rudolfinum has officially opened one of its most ambitious projects to date: the exhibition Decadence Now! Visions of Excess, looking at the use of decadence in contemporary art. The show – featuring work by such artists as Cindy Sherman, Joel-Peter Witkin and the late Robert Mapplethorpe – will shock some but enthuse others, and in all cases draw a strong response.

A plaque was unveiled in Prague on Thursday to a fascinating figure of modern Czech history, General Alois Eliáš. General Eliáš, who had fought in the Czechoslovak Legions in the first world war, was appointed prime minister during the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in the second. While in that post he worked with the resistance – and became the only head of government of an occupied state to be executed by the Nazis.

More than 2,000 astronauts, engineers and scientists are currently rubbing shoulders at the Prague Congress Centre, for the annual International Astronautical Congress. The meeting, being held here for the first time since 1977, covers subjects as diverse as the future of the International Space Station and whether there’s life on Mars.

A war of words has erupted between the two Czechs charged with steering the country’s external relations: the president and foreign minister. The clash stems from concerns that the Czech opt-out from the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty demanded by President Václav Klaus might not be looking so solid.

Tuesday was a state holiday in the Czech Republic, the Day of Czech Statehood, which marks the feast day of the patron Saint Václav, or Wenceslas. While it has always been a red-letter day for Czech Roman Catholics, who commemorate the martyr’s murder in the year 935, it is only in recent years that the date has gained in political significance. This year the office of the government marked the occasion with a special ceremony to return an 80 year old film epic about the holy monarch to the screen.

The outspoken Czech President Václav Klaus raised more than a few eyebrows at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York when he suggested in his address on Saturday what was needed was not an increased role for the organisation in global governance. While he agreed some reforms were necessary - namely to the Security Council – he made clear that the UN needed to adhere more closely to its founding principles.

The Czech Film and Television Academy has made its choice for which film to send to the 2011 Academy Awards, putting its trust once again in director Jan Hřebejk for his drama Kawasaki’s Rose. That Mr Hřebejk has Oscar potential we already know – his WWII drama Divided We Fall was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2000 – but was Kawasaki’s Rose indeed the best candidate for an Oscar on offer; that’s a question I put to film critic Ilona Francková.

The sound of sirens set in motion the wheels of a nightmare scenario at Temelín – a nuclear leak that would threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The two-day training exercise held this week went through the motions of a crisis scenario involving Temelín employees, integrated rescue services and local officials in order to ascertain their action-capability and degree of coordination in the event of a real disaster.

The south Moravian city of Brno has a new attraction. The city hall recently unveiled a new clock in the central Freedom Square which officials hope will become a new symbol of the city. But many locals snicker at the six-metre tall object, and not just because it’s quite hard to tell the time from it.