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Wednesday sees the launch of the 23rd Prague Writers’ Festival, whose highlights will include appearances by one of the most important guests the event has ever brought to the Czech capital: the Noble Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. However, problems surrounding funding mean that this year’s festival will be the shortest to date.

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the work of great Baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka – in his day admired by contemporaries like Johann Sebastian Bach. His work was completely forgotten after his death, only rediscovered 150 years later by the Romantic-period composer Bedřich Smetana. Slowly, knowledge of Zelenka’s work emerged. Even now there is plenty to be discovered: Prague’s Ensemble Inégal recently performed Zelenka’s forgotten Easter Mass for the very first time.

The first post-election conflict between former competing presidential candidates – foreign minister Karel Schwazenberg and current president Milos Zeman - broke out a few weeks ago, when the two politicians clashed over ambassadorial appointments. Today the two met at Prague Castle to resolve the row. Petr Drulák, the director of Prague’s Institute of International Relations spoke to Radio Prague about what is unusual about this dispute.

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.