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In recent years literacy experts have expressed concern that children are not reading enough for pleasure and that many youngsters are never read to by their parents. They claim that children who are left to fill their own time, watching TV and playing computer games may be at a serious disadvantage later on in life. In an effort to offset this alarming trend a Czech NGO is organizing an annual week of events to provide inspiration for a habit that may turnaround a child’s life.

Twenty-three-year-old Alexandra Kinova has become a household name in the Czech Republic after giving birth to the country’s first quintuplets. Ever since doctors upped the number of babies from four to five in April the media zoomed in on the story and followed the expectant mum’s every step up until the birth nearly a fortnight ago.

It’s a far cry from the country’s traditional tourist sites. The imposing Vítkovice ironworks, dubbed the steel heart of the country, served the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the First Republic, the Wehrmacht and later communist Czechoslovakia. In 1998 part of this huge industrial complex with its blast furnaces and coke oven batteries was closed down and rather than getting dismantled it was declared a national cultural monument that is gradually being transformed into an interactive museum and a multipurpose cultural facility.

Like many child survivors of the Holocaust Vera Egermayer, started a new life in a new environment soon after the war. Her family moved to New Zealand when she was just eight and the country became her second homeland. A few years after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia she returned to her birthplace as New Zealand’s honorary consul and faced the ghosts of the past, the murder of family members and her own internment at Terezin.

Organized by the International Dvorak Society, the American Spring music festival (April 8th to July 4th) annually brings internationally renowned soloists and music ensembles to a broad audience in the Czech Republic, with concerts and master classes taking place in dozens of towns and villages around the country. Among this year’s performers is pianist Diana Fanning from Middlebury College, Vermont whose recent piano recital featured music by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. When she visited Radio Prague’s studio shortly after the recital we talked

With the volume of traditional mail severely undermined by electronic communication the Czech Republic’s postal service, Česka Pošta, has seen its profits drop in recent years. Now, newly approved legislation liberalizing the country’s postal services has made matters worse, putting ever greater pressure on Czech Post to expand into new areas of business or bow out.

In 2012 athlete-philanthropist David Chrištof ran unsupported from Prague to London to raise money for safe drinking water for an orphanage in Uganda. This week he set out on a 3000 km run from Prague to Morocco to bring attention to the world water crisis and raise more money for people not fortunate enough to have this basic necessity.

A survey out this week has put Romanies at the bottom of the ladder as the least popular minority in the Czech Republic. It is not for the first time that they hold this unenviable position, nor is it likely to be the last. So what makes the Romany minority so unacceptable in the eyes of the majority white population? According to the Czech government agency for social inclusion the media is partly to blame.

Many Czech towns and cities are filling with video surveillance cameras as an effective way of curbing crime. While many have welcomed the practice, others warn that it could lead to a massive invasion of privacy.

It was meant to be the pride of Brno - the town’s own astronomical clock to rival Prague’s famous Orloj and attract tourists to the Moravian metropolis. Located on the city’s Freedom Square the shiny black six-metre-tall, phallus-shaped clock has attracted praise and insults in equal measure since its unveiling two years ago. As Brno City Hall hoped, it has become the talk of the town but in a slightly different way than expected.