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Countless events will take place around the Czech Republic next weekend marking the anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. In Prague the centenary celebrations will include the official reopening of the main National Museum building after major renovations. However, that is just one of many things that locals and visitors can look forward to, organiser Vladimír Bláha told me.

Czech tennis player Radek Štěpánek has bid a final farewell to his career. And the two-time Davis Cup winner has officially hung up his racket in spectacular style – with enormous international and Czech sports stars attending his exhibition event at a sold-out 02 Arena in Prague on Thursday.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has gone back on a promise to implement a Code of Ethics for cabinet ministers, instructing the Ministry of Justice to stop work on draft guidelines and focus instead on a new lobbying law. Advocates for greater transparency in government see it as a blow to the fight against corruption.

Bilateral relations with Moscow have been strained since Brussels imposed sweeping sanctions following the Russian occupation and later annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. EU individual and corporate sanctions have since been expanded and extended numerous times, and are now due to remain in place at least until 15 March 2019. In the meantime, the Czech government is now moving to establish a normal working relationship.

Little over a week before the centenary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia, a freshly released film brings the state’s founder to the big screen. Talks with T.G. Masaryk reconstructs a single conversation between the “father of the nation” and writer Karel Čapek, another symbol of the First Republic era.

A new electric scooter sharing system in Prague, implemented only three weeks ago, has already met with some raised eyebrows across the capital. Many locals complain they are dangerous and take up space on the pavement. Meanwhile the City Hall, which did not hesitate to ban Segways in the past, says the operators need to work more closely with local districts.

The Czech Academy of Sciences has just handed out its annual awards to scientists for outstanding results in research and for promoting and popularising science. The researchers, whose focus of interest ranges from abstract algebraic logic to forest biodiversity, will also share CZK 1 million in prize money.

The fifth annual mass drumming session is set to take place on Tuesday afternoon, marking the first Jewish transports from Prague on 16 October, 1941. The event takes place at the former Bubny railway station, from which the Nazis sent around 50,000 people to their deaths.

Three and a half months after the official forming of Andrej Babiš’s cabinet, the Czech foreign ministry has received a full-time leader. Until now, Jan Hamáček, who is minister of the interior, had been in temporary charge. In a move that is widely understood as a political compromise, the new man in charge is Tomáš Petříček, the previous candidate’s assistant.

The Civic Democrats and the Mayors and Independents gained 10 and seven seats, respectively, in elections to one-third of seats in the Senate that concluded at the weekend. In stark contrast, governing parties ANO and the Social Democrats won only one mandate apiece. Though ANO’s poor showing has vexed leader Andrej Babiš, the outcome was not unexpected, says political scientist Petr Just.