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This month saw the launching of a new EU-funded child-care project aimed at helping families with young children juggle work and family. In view of the lack of day nurseries and kindergartens around the country the Brno Centre for Family Planning and Child Care has launched a “rent-a-granny” scheme along the lines of the Oma Dienst project successfully implemented in neighbouring Austria.

The Czech Constitutional Court has upheld the government’s tax on solar power, introduced retroactively last year in an effort to cool the solar boom in the country. Photovoltaic firms complain the tax damages their business while foreign investors into the business are threatening to initiate international arbitrations against the country. But the court said their interests cannot be superimposed over those of Czech citizens.

An international meeting of Czech language and literature experts, among them teachers and translators, kicked off at Prager Literaturhaus, a Czech institute that promotes Prague’s German literary heritage. For the next four days, lovers of the Czech language will be discussing their field of expertise and exchanging their findings in a number of seminars, panel discussions and lectures. On the first day of the international get-together, we speak with Kristin Kilsti, a Norwegian literary translator who works from Czech into her native tongue.

As Czechs are slowly digesting the shocking case of the Social Democrat politician David Rath, more details emerge about his arrest and the crime he allegedly committed. The opposition MP and governor of Central Bohemia was arrested on Monday with seven million crowns in his possession. While Mr Rath maintains his innocence, he has been charged with corruption, and remains in detention.

Czech shareholders who lost millions of crowns to controversial businessman Viktor Kožený in the 1990s, have a strong chance of getting back partial compensation. There is a new possibility that the equivalent of around half a billion crowns gained from the sale of Mr Kožený’s Aspen chalet in the US, could be transferred to the Czech Republic. Shareholders have 10 days in which to file a formal request.

One of the most prominent figures of the opposition Social Democratic party, MP and Central Bohemian governor David Rath has been charged with corruption. Mr. Rath was arrested on Monday night along with seven other people in a large-scale police operation that is believed to be linked to abuse of EU funds.

The Czech government has announced its decision to dump a costly electronic health records project launched ten years ago. The project which was to facilitate communication between doctors regarding treatment of individual patients failed to get off the ground properly and was frequently criticized for lack of transparency.

A 37-year-old Czech woman has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering her four children. The Regional Court in Hradec Králové, in eastern Bohemia, on Friday rejected the woman’s claim she suffered from memory loss, and convicted her of the murders. She became the fourth woman to receive a life sentence since the fall of communism in the country. But the woman collapsed during the reading of the verdict and the court will now decide whether the defendant will be brought to court again.

The Israeli author Tom Segev is in Prague to launch the Czech translation of his acclaimed biography of the Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. Entitled Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, Tom Segev’s latest work offers a critical yet compassionate look at the complicated man who devoted his life to tracking down Nazi criminals. Radio Prague spoke to Tom Segev during his Prague visit, and asked him how different the real Simon Wiesenthal was from the myths he himself helped create.

Organisers in the Czech Republic have launched a project similar to Great Britain’s Jolly Riders Foundation, whereby anyone can donate an old bicycle to a child in Africa. Although in operation only briefly, Kola pro Afriku (Bikes for Africa) has already taken off and is attracting broad interest.