The Czech Finance Ministry has released the short conclusion of a 50-page report by the European Anti-Fraud Office into the so-called Stork’s Nest affair. While members of the lower house of the parliament’s immunity committee will be given access to the full report, it still remains unavailable to the public.

At the end of 2015 the Australian novelist and essayist Liam Pieper was Prague’s first writer-in-residence through the UNESCO City of Literature programme. His two months in Prague bore fruit. Last year Liam’s powerful and disturbing novel, The Toymaker, was published by Penguin Australia to critical acclaim. It has since been translated into several languages, including Czech. Set in Auschwitz, wartime Prague and Krakow, and contemporary Melbourne, The Toymaker grapples with the legacy of the Holocaust and reminds us of the dangers of keeping silent about the past.

In Magazine: Prague among top 20 most visited cities in the world; police officers complain their bulletproof vests aren’t bulletproof; a minor takes two buses on a joyride; a Czech bug enthusiast boasts a 10cm cockroach and the most bizarre things Czechs leave behind in taxis.

Hello and welcome to a fresh edition of SoundCzech, Radio Prague’s Czech language course in which you can learn Czech idioms with the help of song lyrics. Today’s song, sung by Markéta Konvičková, is called Z ráje jsem utekla – I ran away from heaven. The words to listen out for are ráj and peklo.

Spotlight this week comes from Uherské Hradiště, a charming picturesque town in south-east Moravia. Like so many places in this part of the world, Uherské Hradiště has a rich and complex history. As tour guide Lenka Kornelová explains, the town was established nearly eight centuries ago in reaction to the turbulent events of that time and the city actually gets its name - meaning "Hungarian Fortress" - from this period.

Pavel Kohout is an economist who seems seldom out of the media. He recently created a stir when he announced he was leaving the government’s advisory committee, NERV, and criticised government willingness to tackle multi-billion crown corruption in public tenders. That furore appears to have blown over and Mr. Kohout seems on course to give further advice to the government and the new political party, Public Affairs.

The Czech Foreign Minister has announced a wide ranging review of foreign policy to take account both of changes in the Czech Republic and those in the wider world. The review comes with the jury still out on whether a more streamlined EU foreign policy can deliver, the outcome of Afghanistan still unclear and questions still up in the air about relations with Russia.

The Czech auto sector, both cars and components, is booming. But the boom is not shared equally between the country’s biggest producers. While the biggest manufacturer, Škoda Auto, is hard pressed to keep up with demand, Hyundai saw production drop slightly last year and the trend is set to continue in 2018.

Daniel Stach is the charismatic host of Hyde Park Civilisation, a weekly program which runs every Saturday evening on public broadcaster Czech TV. Daniel has interviewed numerous acclaimed scientists, award-winning and groundbreaking researchers, Nobel Prize laureates about everything from quantum mechanics to the latest research in DNA. There is no doubt in his mind, or the team behind him, that the spreading of information, the debate of ideas, and an understanding of science, is of fundamental importance for our future.

In recent years, Czech two way trade with the United Kingdom has advanced by leaps and bounds. The country was already the fourth biggest Czech trade partner two years ago in 2015, following first placed Germany, Slovakia, and just trailing Poland in third place. But the current trading environment for Czechs in Britain is a tough one.

Czechs and Slovaks are marking 25 years since the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the birth of two independent republics in the heart of Europe. What led to the so-called Velvet Divorce after more than seventy years of a common state and was it inevitable? How do Czechs and Slovaks feel about the break-up today? And have the two neighbor states managed to retain the special relationship born of many years of close co-existence?

In this Sunday Music we feature music by the Mandrage, a Plzeň-based band whose music ranges from soft and pop-rock to pop-punk.

2017 was not a particularly notable year for Czech sport. However, there were some outstanding individual successes, with Barbora Špotáková winning javelin gold at the World Athletics Championships and Karolína Plíšková becoming the country’s first women’s tennis number one in decades.

As the year draws to a close all of us here at the English department of Radio Prague would like to thank our devoted listeners the world over for their dedication to the station, for being with us and taking the time to drop us a line or write an email to share your views about what you found particularly interesting and what you’d like to hear more of on Radio Prague. In this special edition of Mailbox I’d like to quote from a few of your letters and emails and reveal a little of what’s in the pipeline for 2018.

“Adopt a Doll, Save a life” is a project launched by the Czech branch of UNICEF fifteen years ago. Over that time it has helped to save the lives of some 30,000 children. Ahead of the Christmas holidays the Czech mission to the United Nations and the Czech branch of UNICEF brought the project to New York, organizing a charity auction at the National Bohemian Hall.