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As is customary on the Day of Czechoslovak Independence, the Czech president awarded the highest honours of the land last week to doctors and scientists, soldiers and artists, political prisoners and everyday heroes. Many received the orders of the Czech Republic after tremendous travails, one after giving his own life.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas is on a brief working visit to the United States where he will be meeting with US President Barack Obama later on Thursday. The agenda of Mr Nečas’ first visit to the Oval Office will be dominated by the multi-billion tender to expand the Czech Temelín nuclear power plant, in which the US firm Westinghouse is one of the bidders.

In a tradition going back to 1920, on the eve of October 28, marking the birth of Czechoslovak independence, the Czech Culture Ministry grants annual State Awards to outstanding Czech authors and translators. This year’s recipients are author and literary scholar Daniela Hodrová and translator and university professor Martin Hilský who recently completed his translation of the entire work by William Shakespeare.

There is general agreement among the country’s parliamentary parties that the Czech Republic would benefit from a law on national referendums, however the approval of such a bill is severely hampered by fierce debates on what issues should be subject to a popular vote.

In recent years the media, including Radio Prague, repeatedly reported about the Czech Republic experiencing a baby boom. It seemed obvious: statisticians reported increasing birth figures, maternity hospitals were bursting at the seams and mothers had to register months ahead of their delivery to secure a place. So is the baby boom now over and in fact – did it ever happen?

Scientists at universities in the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany not long ago revealed fascinating new information concerning mimicry and a type of spider known as micaria sociabilis. Their research suggests that imperfect mimicry, widespread in the animal kingdom and used by this spider, is an advantage when it comes to survival because it offers the best of both worlds. In the spider’s case, it can hide in plain sight pretending to be an ant. But if discovered it can also escape, like a spider, at unexpected speeds.

The media coverage surrounding the problems in the eurozone has - rightly – focused on the seventeen countries that use it, as they attempt to shore up efforts to stop the sovereign debt crisis from spreading. But what of the ten that don’t, and especially those new members like the Czech Republic, which must – at some point - adopt the euro under the terms of their EU membership?

An ongoing investigation into the recently thwarted mutiny in a number of Czech prisons suggests that the plot had nothing to do with the notorious Berdych gang as previously thought, but was incited by much more prosaic reasons – the atrocious living conditions in Czech jailhouses.

The town of Karlovy Vary faces a massive claim for bonds issued in 1924. The controversial US lawyer Edward Fagan this week asked Karlovy Vary to pay off over 500 million US dollars on the bonds and their interest. While officials in Karlovy Vary and at the Czech Finance Ministry are now studying the case, Mr Fagan said he would wait until the end of the month before taking the matter to court.

Thieves recently broke into a museum in the north-east of the Czech Republic boasting a magnificent display of hunting trophies, and took what they believed to be a rhino horn. Although this particular horn was fake, the burglary was the latest in a series of similar incidents that have occurred around Europe. The police suspect it might be the work of an international gang making profit from rhino horns which are in demand for their alleged medicinal properties.