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Prague’s Café Braun will host an unusual event this week; each evening members of the public will be invited to sit down over coffee or a glass of wine with a leading scientist, to discuss some of the exciting developments in their field. The event’s called ‘a Week of Science Cafés’, and it’s part of a broader campaign by the NGO Czech Head to try and popularise science.

The Czech Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that the government’s austerity package, adopted in late 2010, was approved in breach of the constitution. The package, which slashed social and other benefits to lower the deficit in public finances, was pushed through Parliament after having called a “legislative emergency”. The court said this was unacceptable, and gave the government until the end of the year to have the laws re-approved.

The Czech defence Minister Alexandr Vondra, has suspended from office the head of the Czech military police and two high-level commanders over an unprecedented incident on Friday at the headquarters of public broadcaster Czech TV. Early in the evening - as the station aired its primetime news broadcast - nine masked and heavily armed members of a military command unit forced their way into the news building, pushing past security guards and jumping turnstiles.

The Czech coalition government has backtracked on its plan of how to pay for an overhaul of the country’s pension system. The basic concept of the reform – the addition of private pension funds into the system – remains unchanged. Under pressure from all sides, however, coalition leaders now propose a lower hike in the value added tax than originally planned.

Government moves to marry pension reform and large hikes in Value Added Tax are looking increasingly ragged. Leaders of the main coalition parties are meeting on Thursday to decide their final stance over what was supposed to be an already done deal. And the increasingly under pressure finance minister has walked into a row with editors of newspapers and news weeklies over the impact of the VAT hike on the press.

The Czech government has outlined the country’s stance ahead of an upcoming extraordinary EU summit that will deal with the situation in Libya and other North African countries. President Václav Klaus, who will head the Czech delegation, will tell his counterparts from other EU countries in Brussels on Friday that Prague will only support measures approved by the UN Security Council. But critics say that the Czech Republic, and the West, is again doing too little, too late.

Czechs with medical disabilities are upset by plans for social welfare reform that they believe could lower their standard of living, and that some have even called humiliating. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has proposed four amendments it believes will make the system simpler and more effective; however some of the measures cut to the heart of benefits that disabled people have long been accustomed to. On March 22 they are planning to take to the street to protest.

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that anyone who kills a thief (or thieves) while protecting their property in the Czech Republic will in the future not be tried for manslaughter but murder. Understandably the latter charge carries a higher sentence. Now all courts in the country will have to respect the decision from the country’s highest court.

The Czech Ministry of Health is treading on delicate ground. It is working on a proposal that would set out the scenario where patients could determine in advance when their treatment should be discontinued. The proposal is still being worked on but could be ready to go before the government within a few months.

Publishers, booksellers as well as many consumers in the Czech Republic are far from happy about the government’s intention to raise the VAT on goods including books to a uniform 20 percent to help pay for its pension reform. Those in the book market fear that it will be hard hit and say that in principle books as a cultural mainstay should be exempt, and that has led to an online petition now signed by more than 80,000. But so far – despite the culture minister’s own misgivings over the higher VAT on books – there has been no signal from the government