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Former US ambassador to the Czech Republic William Cabaniss has accused Czech ex-deputy defence minister Martin Barták of soliciting a bribe. The daily Mladá fronta Dnes quoted Mr Cabaniss on Friday as saying that in 2008, Mr Barták asked for “millions of dollars” for his assistance in solving problems the Czech truck maker Tatra had with a commission for the Czech army. Mr Barták, who now serves as deputy finance minister, has denied any wrongdoing.

The Czech Senate met for the final session in its present formation on Friday with one all-important item on the agenda: approving the government’s austerity measures before the Civic Democrats lose their majority in the wake of recent elections for one third of the seats in the upper house. The opposition Social Democrats say the fast-tracked vote was unconstitutional, while a group of protesters briefly held up proceedings by blocking the Senate’s entrance.

After a first leg in the Moravian capital Brno, the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival opens in Prague on Thursday with a programme that combines movies exploring gender and sexual identity with a series of other cultural and social events. Mezipatra, the biggest event of its kind in the Czech Republic, has been going since the year 2000; on the eve of the Prague opening, I asked director Aleš Rumpel how the festival had changed over the years.

A new report by the Czech government’s drug monitoring agency shows an increase in the number of long-term users of intravenous drugs and puts young Czechs at the top of the EU ladder in experimenting with or regularly smoking marihuana. Some experts say this is largely due to a lack of prevention measures and a large degree of tolerance towards the use of psychotropic substances.

Czech environmentalists were celebrating last week after they discovered bear tracks in a rail underpass in the north-east of the country. The tracks were deemed proof that the recently-built underpass, designed to allow animals to safely cross the railway line, was actually working. But it soon turned out that the bear track was faked, and that environmentalists had fallen for a prank.

In response to directives from the European Commission, the lower house of Parliament has passed new legislation regarding the employment and residence of foreigners in the Czech Republic. Foreigners will be required to have sufficient health insurance and their residency permits will have to have biometric information, such as fingerprints. Also, foreigners facing deportation will be able to request an asylum hearing. To find out more about the new bill and what it will mean for foreigners in the Czech Republic, Radio Prague spoke to Lucie Sládková

Czech lawmakers have taken a big step to put a lid on the country’s solar power boom. The lower house has voted through a package of taxes hitting solar companies and power producers to curb electricity price rises next year.

In addition to garnets, the Czech Republic can offer the world one other semi-precious stone found almost exclusively on its territory – a bottle-green gemstone going by the name of moldavite. There are currently four moldavite mines operating in the Czech Republic but rich deposits of the gem in southern Bohemia have now attracted hordes of moldavite hunters out to make a quick fortune.

More than a thousand Czech Roman Catholics are currently converging on the Vatican to give thanks for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Czech Republic one year ago. The visit is all the more significant to the Czech Church just now, days after the pontiff cited the Czech Republic specifically when speaking of what he called the “tragic” spread of atheism. Hana Frančáková of the Pilgrimage Centre of the Bishopric of Hradec Králové was at the Vatican today. On the phone from there, she told me what the roughly 1,300 faithful will be doing on their

The Czech Republic has been accused by a number of non-governmental human rights watchdogs and education groups of taking no steps to stop discrimination against Romany children in schools, in spite of a landmark European decision that discrimination was built into the country’s education system. They say promises to take action have gone unfulfilled and they are now threatening to bring the country to book again.