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At the end of April, activists from the Greenpeace environmental group set up a camp on a patch of land in the Brdy military to protest against the US radar facility to be built there and refused to leave the site in spite of repeated warnings by the military police. After waiting for more than six weeks for hunger and thirst to drive them away the police finally took action on Monday and evicted the campaigners by force. Ruth Fraňková spoke to Jiří Tutter, the head of the Czech branch of Greenpeace, and started by asking him to outline the reason

The heat is on Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s centre right government. Half-way though implementing its programme of fiscal reforms it is racked by internal conflict, under fire from the opposition and growing pressure from trade unions. There are now serious doubts as to whether it can meet its set goals.

Dominik Hašek - goaltender for the Detroit Red Wings and one of the best goalies in the history of the NHL – announced on Monday he was retiring from hockey. Although it is not the first time Hašek has announced giving up the game, at 43 this is likely to be his last. Over 16 years Hašek won the Stanley Cup twice as well as gathered countless personal awards including the NHL’s Hart Trophy for most valuable player in the playoffs (twice) and the Vezina for best goalie during the regular season (six times). He also led the Czech Republic to Olympic

The European Commission’s Prague office hosted a conference on Friday on Slovenia’s experience in adopting the single European currency and how the Czech Republic could learn from it. Unlike Slovenia, which joined the eurozone in 2007, or Slovakia, which will join in 2009, the Czech Republic has no fixed target date for euro adoption and it will be many years before the euro arrives. So what can the Czechs learn from Ljubljana?

The centre-right government has been hit by the most serious crisis in its existence, with Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek admitting the possibility of a minority government. There is now infighting within each of the three coalition parties – the Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Greens – with a number of MPs opposing various issues on the cabinet’s agenda. One of the outspoken rebels is Civic Democrat deputy Vlastimil Tlustý, who earlier this month torpedoed the government’s plan for the restitution of church property. Radio Prague

The Vatican has just ordained father of four Jan Kofroň into the Roman Catholic priesthood. This makes Mr Kofroň the Czech Republic’s first ever married Roman Catholic (Western Rite) priest. But this is not the first time that Father Kofroň has been ordained. He was originally made a priest in 1970s communist Czechoslovakia, where he subsequently worked illegally in the country’s underground church. Following the revolution, the Vatican declared his ordination invalid, but in recent weeks, it has reversed its decision. I met Father Kofroň to ask

The Czech judicial system is supposed to be waging war on criminals, but seems to be waging war on itself this week. The supreme state attorney Renata Vesecká lost a high-profile libel case against her predecessor Marie Benešová on Thursday, in a verdict that has cast new doubt on the long-running saga of the corruption allegations against deputy Prime Minister Jiří Čunek and placed the wobbly centre-right coalition under even more strain.

We're now just a day away from the start of the Euro 2008 Football Championships in Austria and Switzerland. The Czech team will of course be there, and is in fact playing in the tournament's opening fixture on Saturday evening. I went and found out how Prague is gearing up to mark the events and found out what expectations people in the city have of their national side.

The Czech Republic has seen a massive increase in the number of shopping malls in recent years, with around 60 of them dotted around the country. Rare a decade ago, large shopping centres are now part of the everyday lives of millions of Czechs. And while the number of malls keeps on growing, some major retailers are also making inroads into the corner shop market.

This week the Minister for Minorities and Human Rights Džamila Stehlíková announced the preliminary results of an ongoing study on difficulties faced by the Roma on the Czech labour market. Unemployment among many Roma remains high although the Czech average overall it is lower than the European Union’s. Czech officials hope they will be able to map out long-term solutions to help curb unemployment and to limit the number of drop-outs in schools in marginalised communities. They also hope to reinforce new skills to improve chances on the jobs