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The Czech Army has started rotating troops deployed as part of NATO's ISAF mission in Afghanistan. Medical staff for the Czech field hospital flew in Kabul at the end of July; they were followed on Friday by 91 troops of the 6th Rapid Deployment Brigade that will replace their colleagues in a reconstruction team in the north-east of the country.

In just under a year's time the country's smallest coin - the 50 heller piece - will no longer be accepted as valid currency. The Czech National Bank says the little aluminium coin - which weighs just under 1 gram and is worth less than 2.5 US cents - is no longer worth minting, and will be withdrawn from circulation on September 1st 2008. The 50 heller piece thus goes the way of the 10 and 20 heller coins, which were withdrawn five years ago. Tomas Hladek is the Executive Director of the Czech National Bank's Cash and Payments Department.

The collapse of a bridge in the US city of Minneapolis, in which at least four people died, filled the front pages of Czech papers on Friday - and has raised questions about the state of communications here in the Czech Republic. Czech road experts say that the authorities should take the Minneapolis tragedy as a serious warning, because many of the country's roads and bridges are in serious disrepair.

This week the Czech newsmagazine Tyden reported on a theory that the so-called Czech basin, or massif, which makes up most of Bohemia, may have been created by a meteorite hitting the area around 2 billion years ago. The impact of the celestial object hitting the Earth would have been comparable to the force of many combined nuclear blasts. Generally, the Czech basin is thought to have been formed through plate tectonics, but now some scientists are considering a different possibility..

Every summer, a ghastly image of an enlarged tick appears in the papers all over the Czech Republic, warning people against the dangers of these small, blood-sucking insects. The incidence of ticks in the Czech Republic has been on the rise in recent years and with their heightened number, the incidence of tick-transmitted infections - Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis - is increasing as well.

For thirty years, the most popular hard drug in the Czech Republic has been the Czech-made methamphetamine pervitin. Recently, however, the Czech anti-drug authorities have noticed that the price as well as popularity of cocaine is on the increase. Does this mean that as Czechs have become richer their drug habits have also changed?

In 1862 a certain count Metrnych from west Bohemia was traveling through the Caucasus when he came across a plant he'd never seen before - Heracleum, also known as giant hogweed. Fascinated, the count brought back seedlings home for his gardens in Kynzvart Chateau. Much to his delight the giant hogweed immediately took root - and so the count brought this invasive and noxious weed to the Bohemian lands. His legacy has not been forgotten - today towns in west Bohemia are still fighting this toxic invader.

The singer for the popular Czech Roma band Gipsy.cz, which plays an explosive mixture of hip-hop and traditional Romany music, has taken on a new - for his fans perhaps somewhat surprising - role. This week the minister in charge of human rights, Dzamila Stehlikova, appointed Gipsy.cz's Radoslav "Gipsy" Banga ambassador for minorities as part of the European Year of Equal Opportunities.

The International scouting movement celebrated its 100th birthday on Wednesday, and Czechs, along with scouts from around 200 other countries, have been taking part in the festivities. There are now more than 45,000 scouts in the Czech Republic - a far cry from the 13 that attended the first Czech scout camp back in 1912. The rise in membership is impressive, but it's been a bumpy ride for the Czech scouting movement over its first hundred years. With a brief history of scouting in the Czech Republic, here's Rosie Johnston:

His supporters have compared it to the famous Dreyfus case of 100 years ago. On Tuesday, after almost 13 years of legal proceedings and 31 months spent in custody, a Prague court of appeal finally cleared Kurdish doctor and businessman Yekta Uzunoglu of all the charges against him. At one time those charges had included torture, conspiracy to murder and fraud. In March 2007, Dr Uzunoglu was convicted, despite compelling evidence that the accusations against him were fabricated and the chief witness retracting his testimony. On Tuesday that verdict