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The Czech hockey club Pardubice are one step away from winning the playoff final in the Czech hockey league’s Extraliga. On Wednesday, the team, boasting legendary goalie Dominik Hašek in net, trounced opponents Vítkovice 5:2, to take a stranglehold on the best-of-seven series. One more win and they’ll sweep their opponents, winning the title for the first time since 2005. If they do, it will be Hašek’s first hometown title in 21 years, to add to earlier successes such as Olympic Gold and two Stanley Cup rings.

A Czech anti-corruption watchdog is helping citizens at several sites around the county to prepare referenda for or against plans for massive solar power plants. It is taking the unusual step because it says local politicians are riding roughshod over their wishes and curbing democratic discussion to get a share of the huge amounts of cash at stake.

Prague has just seen the opening of a new and rather unusual tourist attraction – a former secret police observation post recently discovered at the top of a bell tower in one of the city’s gothic churches. For just under four decades – from the 1950s to the 1980s – the tower was home to a detachment of communist secret policemen who’d spy on the foreign embassies below. Rob Cameron climbed to the top to have a look.

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is currently hosting an exhibition featuring the work of one of the most talented Czech toy designers of all time Libuše Niklová. Though her name might not ring a bell with the general public, her plastic toys, such as the red inflatable buffalo, have been popular companions to several generations of Czech children.

Prime Minister Jan Fischer will be leaving Czech politics after May’s general elections. The head of the caretaker government said on Tuesday he was nominated for vice-president of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The 59-year old former statistician should assume the post by the beginning of September.

Preparations are in full swing for the 45th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Though much is still being decided, the organisers revealed a lot on Tuesday: there are not one but two Czech films in competition, veteran director Juraj Herz will get a lifetime achievement award, and there will be special sections dedicated to the great British filmmakers Powell and Pressburger, contemporary Belgian film and Australian schlock-horror movies. I caught up with senior programmer Karel Och and asked him what he felt would be the highlights at this

Prague’s transport authority has come up with the idea of extending the night time underground or metro services. The surprise suggestion comes just weeks after they suggested the services end earlier. For the most part, Czechs seem to have welcomed the proposed extension.

A racist passage from a popular Czech children’s book recently sparked a heated debate in the Czech media after a Romany activist asked for it to be withdrawn from the school curriculum. Thousands of Czechs publicly opposed the request, which was also dismissed as unjustified by some Romany organizations. But others believe the issue of racist undertones in some Czech literary works should be taken seriously.

Flights to and from the Czech Republic are beginning to resume as normal after Czech airspace was reopened on Monday, but the country’s airlines and airports are now counting the cost of disruption. They’re also nervously watching for news from Iceland after the emergence of a second ash cloud which threatens to ground European air traffic once again.

In June 2008, the Czech and Slovak Museum in the US state of Iowa was hit by a devastating flood, which has caused damage running into millions of dollars. Now, nearly two years later, it has opened in a new location in the Kosek Building, right in the middle of the Czech Village. To mark the first step on the road to its recovery, the Czech and Slovak Museum has put up a new exhibition called “Rising Above: the story of a people and the flood”. I spoke to the museum’s director Gail Naughton.