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A playground in the central Prague neighbourhood of Podolí has been crowded with, not children, but radiation specialists since Wednesday evening, when the park was found to have up to a five times the normal levels of background radioactivity. On Thursday that reading was raised to 1000 times normal levels at the various source points under the earth. While it is not necessarily dangerous – unless one were to stand over the source for an hour or more – authorities rushed to identify what could possibly be causing the radioactivity, finding a radon

Czech football titleholders Viktoria Plzeň made their second appearance in the prestigious Champions League when they played Italian champions AC Milan on Wednesday. The Czechs put up a brave fight but a harsh penalty and an excellent performance by Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic gave the hosts a 2:0 win, ending Plzeň’s hopes of upsetting the strong favourite.

It was an historic day for commuters Monday as the first RegioJet train rolled on to the tracks, the first ever challenge to the state-owned Czech Railways. Though the brand new RegioJet has only three trains, travellers from Prague to Ostrava or vice versa now have a choice of services for the first time, and it looks like the competition is going to get interesting.

Half a dozen European bison have been returned to the wild at the Ralsko nature reserve, a former Red Army military training ground about an hour’s drive from Prague. It’s the latest chapter in what is a remarkable reversal of fortunes for Europe’s largest mammal. Hunted virtually to the point of extinction, in recent years they’ve made something of a comeback.

Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has been named “Finance Minister of the Year for Emerging Europe 2011”, an award presented by the Washington-based Emerging Markets magazine. The award, given for Mr. Kalousek’s commitment to consolidating public finances amidst a worsening global outlook, is seen as confirmation of the Czech government’s prudent fiscal policy and on picking up the award a beaming Miroslav Kalousek was quick to promise the nation “more cuts in public spending” in the year to come.

The issue of giving birth at home once again came to the fore this week after the country's most senior midwife was found guilty of criminal negligence after overseeing a botched home birth in Prague. A baby boy was left severely brain damaged after being deprived of oxygen, and later died. The midwife denies any wrongdoing, and says the complications were unforeseen and unavoidable.

The Czech coalition government on Wednesday approved the 2012 draft budget with one priority in mind – fulfilling its promise to bring the country’s public finance deficit under control. The projected deficit of 105 billion crowns fulfills that target. It would narrow the gap in public finances to 3,5 percent of the GDP, but analysts say that the latest growth predictions for the Czech economy in 2012 will almost certainly throw a spanner in the works.

Amidst social and ethnic unrest in parts of the country caused by growing tension between the majority population and Romanies, the Czech government on Wednesday adopted a strategy to combat the social exclusion of the Romany minority. Over the next four years, the government plans to spend up to 15 billion crowns on a series of measures ranging from fighting crime to improving the education of Romany children.

A government proposal seeking direct, popular election of the Czech president made it through the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday – a significant success for an idea that lawmakers have dealt with eight times already. Nevertheless, while the coalition and the opposition may have reached a rare consensus for the time being, any such change to the constitution remains fraught by the fact that each party envisions very different conditions for popular elections, and many pundits and political scientists see the popular issue as a non-starter.

Prague’s sizeable Vietnamese community recently held its first ever day of Vietnamese culture, an open event in the centre of town which drew a mixed crowd of Vietnamese and Czechs. What has been a rather closed society appears to be slowly opening up to outsiders, as Czech-born Vietnamese become increasingly confident about their identity and Czechs learn there is more to Vietnamese people than an army of convenience store proprietors.