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The 62nd annual Cannes film festival has come to a close and things couldn’t have gone better for Czech filmmakers. First, young filmmaker Zuzana Špidlová’s 21-minute short feature Bába was voted best film in the Cinefondation section, recognising young new talent; and the seasoned Czech documentary filmmaker Helena Třeštíková clinched the Media European Talent award.

An exhibition of works by Britain’s Damien Hirst has just opened at Prague’s Rudolfinum. He is the richest living artist the world has ever seen, and perhaps best known for placing dead animals in formaldehyde and covering a human skull in diamonds. The new show is curated by Gunnar Kvaran from the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. At its opening, I asked him what it was about Damien Hirst that made him such an art superstar.

One of the last major meetings to take place under the Czech EU Presidency has come to a close – the EU-Russia summit in the eastern city of Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border. It was not, by all accounts, a great success, with no breakthrough on any of the issues that divide Russia and the EU. And it seems not even the presence of the Czech Republic’s Russophile president Václav Klaus in the driving seat had much effect.

The European Union and China came together in Prague on Wednesday in an attempt to launch a new phase in mutual relations. Although no major deals were sealed in the Czech capital, the summit set the stage for cooperation in addressing the global economic crisis, trade and climate change.

Public service broadcaster Czech Television has sparked a major row by broadcasting a pre-election spot for the extremist Národní strana, or National Party. The clip provided a platform for the far-right group to express its hatred of the country’s large Roma minority. This included the shocking promise of “a final solution to the gypsy problem.” In the uproar that followed the broadcaster eventually gave way and said it will not screen the spot again, though its judgement has been called into question.

On Tuesday, the Czech Charter 77 Foundation awarded two young Czechs, Jakub Štěrbík and Stanislav Vodička, this year’s František Kriegel Award for outstanding personal courage. A year ago the two stood up to skinheads shouting hate slogans and giving the Hitler salute. For his efforts, Mr Štěrbík was stabbed in the neck; his friend Stanislav Vodička came to his aid and was also knifed.

The British scandal over MPs imaginative expense payments has focused attention on how Czech lawmakers are compensated and their accounts controlled. The comparison shows many similarities between the two systems with similar abuse difficult to rule out.

European ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros is in Prague this Wednesday as part of a campaign to raise awareness about what he can do to protect European residents’ rights. Mr Diamandouros receives around 3,500 complaints a year, mainly regarding discrimination or maladministration in EU institutions. But what is his job exactly, and how can he help Czechs? I met Nikiforos Diamandouros to find out:

Sir Nicholas Winton – the British man who helped save 669 Czechoslovak Jewish children from the Nazis in 1939 – will receive a telegram from the Queen on Tuesday to mark his 100th birthday. As well as the traditional reunion with those “Winton children” who settled in Britain after the war, there were a number of events in the Czech Republic to mark his centenary.

Slavia Prague have won the Czech football league for the second time in a row, after beating Viktoria Žižkov on Monday evening. For decades they have had been accused of being věčně druhý (forever second), overshadowed by the country’s richest club, Sparta Prague. So do Slavia’s two titles in two seasons represent a real power shift in Czech football?