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When French President Nicolas Sarkozy packs his bags for a working visit to Prague next week he’ll be taking much less than anticipated. A giant bronze statue of Jan Palach which was to have accompanied him to Prague as a gift to the Czech government is to remain in Paris.

Ron Fletcher is in many ways the archetypal West Coast fitness guru. Following the death of his teacher Joseph Pilates, Fletcher moved to LA where he developed his own version of the Pilates Method. His classes in the 1970s were attended by many of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and his work helped make Pilates the world-wide exercise phenomenon it is today. Now a hale 87, Ron Fletcher is in Prague at the moment for a Pilates conference. When we met, I first asked him about his work with Joseph Pilates, which began in the 1940s.

The Czech Republic’s footballers were beaten 3:1 by Portugal in their second game at the European Championship on Wednesday evening. That result was perhaps unfortunate for the Czechs, whose play showed marked signs of improvement. Now it’s going right down to the wire: Petr Čech and Co. have to beat Turkey to advance to the quarter-finals.

Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that his U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice would visit the Czech Republic in early July to sign a treaty – or treaties – on the planned deployment of a U.S. radar base on Czech soil. But in an interview for the Reuters news agency, Mr Schwarzenberg admitted he wasn’t sure ratification would get through the Czech parliament before George W. Bush leaves office. He also said he would offer his resignation if the proposal was defeated by MPs.

Theatres and other state-subsidised arts institutions were celebrating victory over Prague’s City Council this week after councillors scrapped a controversial new system of awarding subsidies. The system – under which Prague’s theatres were subsidised according to the number of tickets sold – sparked a wave of protest by arts organisations and even led to angry artists disrupting a meeting of the city council.

Just a week ago the Czech ice hockey player Jiří Hudler celebrated the greatest success of his career, when his club the Detroit Red Wings won the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Hudler, who is 24, is now looking forward to showing the coveted trophy to fans in his home town of Olomouc during the summer. Soon after he arrived at Prague Airport on Wednesday morning, I spoke to the young star about his Stanley Cup success, and the retirement (announced on Monday) of team-mate Dominik Hašek.

The rape and murder of 9-year-old Jakub Šimánek from Havlíčkův Brod has shocked the nation, leading to questions why more wasn’t done to keep track of the suspect - a repeat sex offender from neighbouring Slovakia. The Slovak national spent years in detention and upon release was ordered to undergo outpatient treatment. The fact that he didn’t should have set the alarm bells ringing.

A series of 4km fun run events will be held in cities and towns across the Czech Republic this year, in order to raise money and awareness for cancer research in the country. The format of the events will be similar to that of a successful scheme in the UK which has been running since 1994. And, like the UK events, the Czech version will be sponsored and organised with the help of supermarket giant Tesco. I went along to the inaugural press conference to find out more.

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.