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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.

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.

Czech tennis player Tomáš Berdych, seeded 15th at the French Open, has made it to the tournament’s semi-final. On Tuesday he powered past Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny in straight sets. He will next face Robin Söderling of Sweden – a finalist at Roland Garros last year, also on a roll: on Tuesday he ousted the world No. 1 Roger Federer.

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.

Looking for something to do this summer? How about spending it on board a fully functioning replica of an 18th century sailing ship similar to that captained by the Czech explorer, merchant and privateer Augustine Herman? The cap’n of the good ship La Grace is currently recruiting crew for the 100-foot brig, which will set sail from Suez in Egypt in a few months’ time.

In the Czech general elections, voters shook up the political scene by turning away from the major parties and supporting newcomers. But the change did not stop there: in a new phenomenon of Czech politics, thousands of preferential votes sent many of the old, familiar faces in the lower house home, to be replaced by outsiders from the bottom of party’s ballots.

Following the weekend general elections, Czech right-wing parties are scrambling to capitalize on their gains and reach agreement on a coalition government of fiscal responsibility. Although there is general agreement on the direction the country should take, Monday’s talks indicated that creating a centre-right coalition will be far from easy.

One of the winners of these elections and a newcomer to Parliament, the Public Affairs party, clearly owes its success to its leader Radek John, a former TV journalist who is a household name in the Czech Republic. His investigative programme on commercial TV NOVA focused on uncovering corruption, something the party has promised to do in top politics as well. However, aside from its self-proclaimed role of watchdog, the party’s background and ambitions remain unclear even to its potential coalition partners. I spoke to political analyst Vladimíra

In the final weeks ahead of the election, polling agencies in the country repeatedly predicted a major win for Jiří Paroubek’s Social Democrats but the reality at the weekend was different. The Social Democrats did come first, but only barely, far from the overwhelming success they had expected. Within hours of the polls closing, it became clear that the party had a marginal chance of forming the next government and that instead the country was now headed for a centre-right coalition promising wide-reaching reforms.