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Civic Democrat leader Mirek Topolánek scored a half victory at the 20th Civic Democrat Party congress that took place in Prague over the weekend. The former prime minister successfully fought off plans to have him ousted as party leader. But the price he paid might prove too high in the run-up for next year’s general elections.

The Ministry of Environment is launching a unique landscape atlas of the Czech Republic. The result of six years work, it contains more than 1200 maps produced by over 300 specialists in 100 institutions. I spoke to the man who initiated the project, Environment Minister Ladislav Miko, and first asked him what purpose such an extensive atlas would serve.

The Czech Senate on Thursday banned an appearance by the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders on its premises. Mr Wilders was going to screen his anti-Islamic film, Fitna, and address a conference held by Czech anti-Islamists and Euro-sceptics.

The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is under pressure this week after a petition was circulated calling for the dismissal of the Institute’s director, Pavel Žáček. Such petitions are not uncommon in the Czech Republic and this one – circulated by former dissident Stanislav Penc – might have gone more or less unnoticed had it not been signed by ex-president Václav Havel.

A rare white tigress was killed by two lions at the Liberec Zoo in north Bohemia on Thursday, as zookeepers stood by helpless, unable to prevent the tragedy. In the incident, the lions managed to lift a trap door leading to an open-air enclosure where the tiger was at the time. The lions reacted, enforcing their right to the territory, fatally trapping the tigress and killing her.

With a sharp increase in swine flu cases in recent days, hospitals across the country are bracing for an epidemic. The first batch of 95,000 swine flu vaccines arrived earlier this week and on Thursday the Czech government announced who would be first in line for them.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer flies into Brussels on Thursday for a special meeting of government leaders to dole out the top jobs created by the European Union’s Lisbon treaty. The share out of those top jobs should pave the way for the formation of the next European Commission and help clarify the post the Czech candidate will get on it. We look at what is at stake at and after the Brussels summit.

Rundown buildings, empty shop-windows and ever-present grayness – that’s the focus of a new photography exhibition called ‘Tady bylo Husákovo’ – ‘This Once Was Husák’s Country’, which is now on display at Prague’s Louvre Gallery. The collection of photographs by Lubomír Kotek documents the atmosphere of Prague streets in the years preceding the Velvet Revolution.

The people of the Czech Republic have been marking the 20th anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution, which led to the collapse of the country’s Communist government after over four decades of repression. The main event on Tuesday was the re-enactment in Prague of the student demonstration that sparked those changes in 1989.

The world of sport was quick to rally to the calls for change after the brutal suppression of the students’ march on November 17. Within a few days footballers and ice hockey players came out in what amounted to a strike until the country’s destiny was settled.