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The former Czech president Václav Havel was admitted to hospital over the weekend with chronic bronchitis and a heart problem. Although his private secretary was quick to reassure the public that his condition was not serious and that Mr. Havel simply needed to get some rest, latest reports suggest that the popular former head of state may need more intensive treatment.

For the first time in the country’s history the Czech Republic will see presidential candidates face off in a (most-likely) televised public debate. Incumbent Václav Klaus originally resisted the idea on the grounds such a contest made little sense within the Czech system, in which the president is elected by Parliament and not by direct vote. But late last week Mr Klaus changed his mind and as a result on January 29th he and challenger Jan Švejnar will field questions from lawmakers in the Senate.

Two soldiers from the Czech contingent in Basra, southern Iraq, were wounded after a rocket hit their section of the Basra air base early Sunday morning. The soldiers only suffered light injuries caused by shards of glass shattered by the blast. This is the second time the Czech section of the Basra air base was hit by insurgent fire since last April.

On Monday evening, Prague plays host to the second annual ‘Night of the Open Churches’ festival. The programme offers out-of-hours prayer services and concerts to Prague’s devout, and just plain curious, citizens. A number of the city’s churches, from right across the Christian spectrum, are taking part in the event. Zuzana Dvořáková is the organiser of the festival; she outlines what is on the programme:

There was a media frenzy surrounding the opening of the Czech Republic’s first Starbucks on Friday. In its new branch on Prague’s Malostranské náměstí, the world’s largest coffee-shop chain promises to ‘enrich people’s lives, one cup of coffee at a time’. It remains to be seen whether Starbucks will live up to its promise, and attract Czechs to pay more than the average for a mug of premium coffee. There’s certainly been a lot of anticipation leading up to Starbucks’ arrival, but will it prove to have been anything more than a storm in a coffee

The mayor of Plzeň has banned a march by neo-Nazi skinheads planned for this Saturday. The ban was announced amid protests from the Jewish community and concerns it could end in violent clashes with anti-fascist demonstrators, as happened in Prague in November. It's now unclear whether far-right activists will attempt to ignore the ban and travel to Plzeň, with chatter on neo-Nazi websites suggesting they may gather in Prague instead.

The Czech Army is facing yet another scandal. Two officers of the army’s General Staff have been accused by the police of fraud for having created a slush fund to buy luxury gifts for their high-ranking colleagues. While the two officers have been demoted to the rank of private and fired, the police may yet raise charges against other members of the General Staff.

Both sides of the missile defence debate wheeled out their big guns in Prague this week, and for the “anti” camp the secret weapon is Philip Coyle, one of America’s leading experts on missile defence technology. Mr Coyle, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration and was in charge of all weapons testing at the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001, has worked on missiles and how to stop them for the last 40 years. Today he’s a senior adviser to the Washington-based Center for Defence Information, and is a leading opponent

Talks between Prague and Washington on the possible stationing of a US radar base on Czech territory acquired a new dimension on Wednesday. The director of the US Missile Defense Agency Henry Obering arrived in Prague flanked by a group of American defense industry business leaders to discuss the possible commercial and scientific benefits for Czech firms if the country agreed to participate in the US missile defense project.

This week, Prague citizens have the rare opportunity to take a close look at and even leaf through a priceless medieval illustrated Bible. Not the original manuscript, of course, but a life-size colour replica of the 14th-century Velislav Picture Bible. The book, containing selected passages from the Bible along with two legends about the Bohemian patron saints Ludmila and Wenceslas, is one of the largest medieval pictorial books made in Central Europe.