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The Czech government is embroiled in a fresh scandal which could further weaken its shaky position in the lower house and hurt its image with the public. Czech TV revealed on Monday that Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek had indirectly asked one of the TV station’s reporters not to air a report that would expose a former Social Democrat MP who defected from the party and has since supported the government in a number of key votes.

Not long ago, a chat over a few beers about the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field on animals got a group of Czech zoologists thinking. Turning to Google satellite pictures for answers, they saw something that had gone unnoticed throughout thousands of years of animal husbandry, that herds of large mammals align themselves north-south when grazing – wind and terrain permitting. Now Dr. Hynek Burda, one of those involved in the earlier finding, has made the news once again by discovering that electrical power lines disrupt this instinct.

The film Voices from El-Sayed, currently being shown in the One World festival, focuses on a Bedouin village in the Negev desert in Israel which has the highest concentration of deaf people in the world. Over the generations a unique sign language has evolved in El-Sayed, where deafness is so common it is not regarded as a handicap. The film’s director Oded Adomi Leshem told me why so many people in the village are deaf.

Coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, the discovery of a number of never-before-seen documents and photographs was announced at the weekend. The new materials shed further light on Hitler’s invasion visit, which ended on this day in 1939.

The Czech daily Lidové Noviny released details on Monday which fill out the circumstances surrounding a Vietnamese man’s death after he was detained by Brno police. The new information released by the paper points to him being the victim of a savage attack after drawing on witness statements and the initial findings of the state prosecutor.

It wasn’t so much crying as sloganeering over spilt milk in Prague on Thursday, as thousands of farmers gathered to protest about the way the EU distributes farming subsidies. Farmers came from as far away as Lithuania to splatter milk and cereal over the pavements of Prague, angered by the low prices these goods fetched, and the way the European Union financed their production. The Czech agricultural minister responded, however, that there was nothing he could do.

If you can imagine a group of scientists in the 25th century going through the cushions of your couch, and excitedly labelling your loose change and lost socks, then you can get some idea of what has been going on in Prague Castle for over the last few months. Taking advantage of the restoration of a floor in a main hall, archaeologists sifting through the backfill have stumbled upon a hoard of items of everyday use - that are now historical treasures.

Unable to get permission to film there, the young Czech documentary maker Linda Jablonská took a different approach after learning that tourists are allowed to bring video cameras below a certain size into North Korea. She and her team joined an officially sanctioned Czech tour group, recording the reactions of members of the party to conditions in the tightly controlled country. Welcome to North Korea! is one of a number of Czech films being shown at One World – and indeed was directly inspired by an encounter at the festival of human rights

The One World festival was launched in Prague on Wednesday night with a powerful documentary called Burma VJ, highlighting the work of brave journalists who secretly film human rights abuses in the country. With foreign media banned, theirs was the only footage of the turmoil in Burma during the huge protests of 2007 that became known as the Saffron Revolution.

Ten years ago this Thursday, the Czech Republic became one of three post-communist countries that joined NATO. To commemorate the anniversary, and to debate the future of the alliance, the Czech Senate is hosting a high-profile conference entitled NATO Enlargement Ten Years On: Achievements, Challenges, Prospects.