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Vladimír Remek is the only Czech to have flown in space, as a crew member on the Soviet Soyuz 28 mission in 1978. Thirty-five years later, Mr. Remek, currently an MEP for the Communist Party, is returning to Russia, with the news on Wednesday that the Czech president has signed the document required to make him ambassador to Moscow.

Members of an expert team from Palacký University conducting research on the island of Borneo revealed recently they had uncovered a new species of plant belonging to the Thismiaceae family. Highly-unusual in appearance, the initial specimen was actually found by accident, when one of the members of the team slipped and fell, only to notice the plant growing nearby. The specimen was gathered for research, and later additional samples were found.

Typhoon Haiyan, which made landfall on Friday, has affected more than 10 million people in the Philippines, with thousands of fatalities and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. Humanitarian organizations in the Czech Republic began preparations to help the victims already over the weekend. A number of NGOS have released almost a million crowns in total from their emergency funds. We spoke to Radomír Špinka, the deputy director of ADRA Czech Republic, about how the organization will be aiding the international relief efforts.

Czech President Miloš Zeman has in the past suggested caustically that his day wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t insult at least one person. Well on Monday, the president – who is recovering from a knee injury – inadvertently insulted a good many by suggesting in a radio interview it would be “undignified” to name the country’s next prime minister from a wheelchair.

After facing down rivals within his own party, the Social Democratic chairman Bohuslav Sobotka has finally begun negotiations on the future government. This weekend, the central executive committee of the party confirmed him as the chairman and gave him the go-ahead to proceed with talks, with the two most likely coalition partners being Andrej Babiš’ ANO and the Christian Democrats. I spoke to analyst Jiří Pehe about Mr. Sobotka’s prospects of negotiating a new government.

A recent attempt by several top Social Democrats to oust party leader Bohuslav Sobotka has come full circle: on Friday it was they and not the chairman who stepped down. Michal Hašek and Jeroným Tejc followed senior party member Zdeněk Škromach in resigning from their posts, pledging to support their party and show renewed unity.

In its report for 2012, released on Thursday, the Czech intelligence service BIS warns that corruption remains a serious problem in the country, with increasingly tighter links between businesses and public administration. The service says that the public’s growing frustration with the present state of affairs is leading to a rise in extremism that presents a threat to democracy in the country.

Scientists from the Czech Astronomical Institute believe they have found the origin of the Chelyabinsk meteor that hit Russia in February. In a paper published in Nature magazine, they suggest the meteor split from a larger asteroid some 10,000 years ago in a collision that directed it towards the Earth. The scientists also warn that the risk of similar asteroid strikes is much higher than previously thought. I spoke to one of the authors of the paper, Jiří Borovička.

The Czech police have begun a mass raid on so-called grow shops, which sell equipment for indoor gardening, and often for growing marijuana plants. Authorities have already charged a number of people connected with these stores with distribution and promotion of illegal substances, but critics say they cannot be held responsible for the behavior of their customers.

The Czech Republic is seeing a steep rise in cases of whooping cough. This year, doctors have registered 880 cases of the highly contagious disease, and expect that by the end of the year, the number could exceed one thousand. Such a high incidence of whooping cough was last registered in the 1960s.