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The troubled national carrier Czech Airlines will remain in state hands, at least for the time being. After weeks of speculation, the Czech government on Monday refused a sole bid it had received in a tender from the Czech-Icelandic consortium of Unimex and Travel Service. It based its decision on a recommendation by the Finance Minister Eduard Janota, who said the offer was simply too inconvenient.

European leaders on Tuesday were focussed on events at a courtroom in the Czech Republic’s second city Brno. The country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, is meeting there over a complaint that the EU’s reforming Lisbon treaty is in conflict with national law. Chris Johnstone has been following events in the courtroom. We asked him why the complaint is so important.

Looking back at the events of 1989 in Czechoslovakia, most people will probably think of the student demonstration on November 17th which kicked off the Velvet Revolution. The November protest was the last in a series of events that took place that year and were violently suppressed by riot police. One of them was an illegal rally to commemorate the 71st anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia on October 28th, 1989 held on Prague’s Wenceslas Square.

A film series devoted to Czech cinema opened in New York on Friday at the prestigious Film Society of Lincoln Center. The series, called Ironic Curtain: Czech Cinema since the Velvet Revolution, is running for seven days and showcases a wide range of Czech pictures made over the last two decades.

The 13th International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava, the biggest event of its kind in Central Europe, gets underway on Tuesday. Over the following six days, it will screen more than 200 documentaries from all over the world including the most recent documentary by Michael Moore, ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’. I asked the festival’s director Marek Hovorka to outline the programme.

Wednesday marks the 91st anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia. In conjunction with that anniversary, the National Memorial on Prague’s Vítkov hill has just been officially reopened after extensive renovations. It was built in honour of the Czech legionnaires whose bravery in World War I helped pave the way for the creation of the state, and reflects much of modern Czech history.

Five months after the first case of swine flu was detected in the Czech Republic the illness has claimed its first victim – a woman, aged 31, succumbed to it in hospital in Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia on Thursday. The patient’s condition was already serious when she was admitted to hospital and the H1N1 virus is said to have caused fatal complications. Another patient with swine flu, a man aged around 30, is now reported to be in a critical condition in the same ward.

The US Vice-President, Joe Biden, met with Czech officials in Prague on Friday on the third leg of his Eastern European tour intended to test the ground for the region’s participation in a new US missile defence plan. At a news conference following the talks, Mr Biden and Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said the Czech Republic was ready to get involved in the revamped project.

The Office for Personal Data Protection says it has never encountered such a large-scale database of illegally collected personal data: information from 200,000 drug prescriptions a day for the last six months showing who uses what kind of medicine. And the body collecting it? The State Institute for Drug Control.

Wednesday afternoon saw roughly one hundred right-wing extremists protest in front of the Office of the Government, in reaction to a carefully-planned crackdown by police earlier in the day. Officers moved in in the early hours of Wednesday morning to arrest almost 30 individuals across the country suspected of ties to extremist and neo-Nazi groups.