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Nineteen-year-old Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecká fulfilled her childhood dream, winning gold at the World Championships. Way back when her grandfather was a World Championship gold winner in ice hockey; she is the first Czech to have clinched the gold in the parallel slalom.

The minister of industry is weighing up an easing of limits on coal mining in north Bohemia, which will be disquieting news to locals who could lose their homes. But the main Czech trade union organisation is pushing for an even more radical move – abandoning the limits completely.

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, everybody though that the country’s biggest children’s organizations, Pionýr, would fall into oblivion, being replaced by the more respected Scouts. But Pionýr has bounced back and this year celebrates 25 years since it was reinvented. Ruth Fraňková spoke to Pionýr’s Jakub Kořínek and first asked him if the organisation had any ties to its communist predecessor.

A Czech mother fighting for the return of her two sons in Norway, who the authorities took away from her and her former husband over alleged sexual abuse in 2011, will now see her children only twice a year for a total of 30 minutes. Although charges were never filed in the caase, the brothers have lived in separate foster homes since.

Thousands of elephants in Central Africa fall prey to ivory poachers every year. The Czech Republic is now making a small contribution to the fight against illegal trade in ivory. A specially trained Czech sniffer dog will be sent to over to Congo to help local customs officials detecting smuggled ivory. The project was initiated by the Czech NGO Save-Elephants.

The Czech government on Monday approved measures which will give the country’s intelligence service greater powers in fighting terrorism and organized crime. It also released more money to equip Prague’s international airport with a face recognition system and other state-of-the-art security technology.

Pexeso, the Czech answer to Memory, is turning 50. The game, ever popular with children and their parents, traditionally consists of 32 identical pairs of drawings to be matched up.

Doctors warn that in the past five years there has been an increase in the number of babies born with a neonatal abstinence syndrome as a result of their mother’s drug addiction. Hospitals and child centers across the country confirm this trend.

President Miloš Zeman stirred considerable controversy this week, suggesting that handicapped children in the Czech Republic would be better off not sharing classrooms with non-handicapped students. He made the statement against inclusive education at a rehabilitation institute in East Bohemia. His words provoked broad reaction, with many saying the stance clashed with progressive values.

The Czech government has agreed to take in around 70 refugees of the Syrian conflict, currently situated in Jordan. The decision, which was unanimously approved by the cabinet on Wednesday, has met with mixed reactions from opposition politicians – some say the country should do far more to help the victims of Syria’s civil war; others fear the economic and cultural burdens of taking in people from such a dangerous part of the world.