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The former CEO of the Czech lottery firm Sazka, Aleš Hušák, is facing a lawsuit by the company’s main shareholder, the Czech Sports Association, over his role in the company’s demise. Sazka’s bankruptcy severely undermined funding for Czech sports and the association is now demanding an apology and one billion crowns from Mr Hušák.

Czech municipalities have been given greater powers in regulating gambling on their premises. On Thursday the country’s Constitutional Court struck down legislation that prevented town and city halls from banning lottery video terminals on their premises until the end of 2014. The judges said that the provision, which protected terminals licensed by the Finance Ministry, contradicted communities’ right to self-administration. Jan Richter spoke to Vladan Brož from the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International about the court’s ruling.

Since it was established six years ago the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has provided unprecedented public access to secret files once held by the security apparatus of communist Czechoslovakia. But it’s been a troubled institution, under constant political pressure and plagued by in-fighting. And now it’s in turmoil again, after the latest director was sacked.

A Czech clothing designer Beata Rajská announced this week that she is going to the African country of Zambia to teach youngsters there how to sew clothing. The highly successful designer will be joining the staff at a vocational school run by a Brno-based organization Njovu. Masha Volynsky spoke to the NGO’s director, Vendula Jičínská, and asked her about the project that Ms Rajská will be helping with, in the next ten days.

Representatives of the Czech government and Czech Aeroholding signed an agreement with Korean Air on Wednesday, giving the South Korean state airlines a 44-percent stake in Czech Airlines. The Czech side sees the new partnership as a long-awaited lifeline for the struggling state airline, while the Koreans are hoping to gain a stronger foothold in Europe.

A much-anticipated exhibition of posters by the Czech Art Nouveau master Alfons Mucha has just opened its doors at the grand Municipal House in central Prague. The collection, which belongs to the Czech-born tennis legend Ivan Lendl, is the largest in the world and is being shown publicly for the first time ever.

Publisher Alexander Tomsky is an expert on East European affairs who fled Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Russian-led invasion. He spent many years of his life in Great Britain where he lectured at London’s Keston College in the years between 1979 and 1986, heading its Central European Affairs department. It was there that he met the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in person. In a brief phone interview for Radio Prague he recalled the late Mrs. Thatcher’s interest in Central and East European affairs.

Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of Great Britain for 11 years and iconic 20th century politician, is being remembered worldwide, following her death on Monday at the age of 87. A largely polarising political figure at home, Thatcher was nevertheless highly-regarded by many abroad, not least opponents of communism who ranked her in importance alongside US president Ronald Reagan or Pope John Paul II. Radio Prague reports on how Mrs Thatcher is being remembered in Prague.

Marking International Roma Day on Monday, Amnesty International has just launched a Europe-wide campaign entitled Human Rights Here, Roma Rights Now. It aims to end persisting discrimination and segregation that an estimated six million Roma face in many European countries, including the Czech Republic. Mark Martin, the head of Amnesty International’s Czech branch, explains what the campaign hopes to achieve.

The dispute between President Miloš Zeman and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg over who should fill a number of vacant ambassadorial posts shows no sign of abating. On Thursday President Zeman accused Mr Schwarzenberg of ‘amateurism’ after the foreign minister criticised Mr Zeman’s suggestion that Livia Klausová, the wife of his predecessor, should become ambassador to Slovakia.