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A memorial was held in Prague on Thursday for the legendary inter-war footballer Josef Bican, recognised as one of the greatest goal-scorers in the history of world soccer. Bican was born in Vienna and actually played for Austria before moving to Prague and representing Czechoslovakia.

The art collection of Emil Freund, a Prague Jewish lawyer who was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, will return to his heirs in the United States. After the Jewish Museum in Prague traced Emil Freund’s relatives in 2001, it took them seven long years to clear the way for restitution. But part of the collection is to stay in the Czech Republic – the Czech authorities declared some of the paintings a national heritage which means that they cannot leave the country.

The Czech government has already caused a stir with a recent PR campaign for the country’s forthcoming EU presidency, which starts in January. TV and newspaper adverts suggesting that Europe will be ‘given a taste of its own medicine’ when the Czechs take over have left the international press asking what exactly Prague is trying to say about the political institution it is about to lead. Now, the government has unveiled another of its strategies to publicise the presidency which seems no less controversial. A ‘Totalitarian Circus’ is set to represent

Czech arms exporters are preparing a lawsuit against the German government over transit licence permits required by the German authorities for all arms shipments through Germany. Czech exporters are complaining that the authorization – which is often denied – complicates weapon exports approved by the Czech government, and is a relict of the Cold War.

New proposals by the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek will see the Czech national anthem being spruced up in time for a national holiday on September 28 - the day of Czech statehood. The changes are supposed to gently update the anthem and make it more “noble” and appropriate for the modern age.

Two Czech soldiers, who were injured in Monday’s attack on the Czech Provincial and Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, arrived in Prague on Wednesday. The rocket attack by Afghan insurgents has been the third since the second army contingentwas deployed in the Afghan province of Logar, and the security situation in Afghanistan is further deteriorating.

Three weeks ahead of local and Senate elections the Czech political scene is fraught with discord. The Civic Democrats, the strongest party in the Czech governing coalition, has been hard hit by a blackmail and entrapment scandal involving two of its deputies. Last weekend brought another bombshell – the daily Mladá fronta Dnes alleged that two Civic Democrats – rebel deputy Vlastimil Tlustý and Interior Minister Ivan Langer as well as opposition leader Jiří Paroubek of the Social Democrats had in the past been in contact with the mafia, publishing

Thousands of rail passengers in Prague have suffered delays this week, following the theft – not once, but twice – of important telecommunications cables. The copper cables were evidently stolen to be sold as scrap metal, for a fraction of their real value. By coincidence, a bill aimed at curbing the all-too-common problem of metal theft has just been passed.

A Czech butcher has won an award for producing the world’s best klobása, a kind of traditional sausage. Václav Klátil, who runs a family business in a town called Pacov in south Bohemia, picked up first prize in the sausage category at an unofficial butchers’ world championships in the Austrian town of Wels at the weekend. On the line from his shop, Mr Klátil told me why his klobása is the best.

Television reporter Tomáš Etzler has become the first Czech ever to win America’s most prestigious TV award, the Emmy. Etzler was part of a team which won the 2008 Technology and Engineering Emmy for developing equipment which allows journalists to report from remote places cut off from modern technology. The reporter, who now works for Czech Television, helped develop the system during an eight-year stint at CNN.