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The Czech President Vaclav Klaus received the European Regional Integration prize in Austria's Sankt Polten during his one-day state visit on Wednesday. Mr Klaus was awarded with the prize by Lower Austria and the Krems University for preserving equality but also the diversity of regions on the way to a united Europe.

The Social Democratic Party, the senior party in the ruling coalition, has made it to second place on the popularity ladder, an opinion poll suggests. According to the results of the poll, which was conducted by the CVVM agency in May, the opposition right-of-centre Civic Democrats continue to be in the lead with 30%, followed by the Social Democrats with 16%, and the Communists, who had enjoyed second place in preceding months, with 14.5%.

The popularity of the Social Democrats suffered greatly at the beginning of the year when the party backed its leader and then prime minister Stanislav Gross in a scandal over his personal finances that led to a coalition crisis. Mr Gross resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Jiri Paroubek in April.

Two miners died early on Tuesday in an accident at the Darkov coal mine near Karvina in the east of the Czech Republic. A spokeswoman for the mining company said the accident happened 770 metres below the surface when rocks caved in on the miners. The cause of the accident is being investigated.

Eight senators have expressed support for an association of Czech house owners who are planning to sue the Czech Republic for hundreds of millions of crowns in "moral damages" at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The association is unhappy with the country's policy of regulated rent. Eight senators for the opposition Civic Democratic Party have publicly backed the association's decision to sue the Czech Republic calling on the government to address the problem. House owners who have filed the complaint, say that the collected rent does not even cover maintenance costs. Rent control covers almost 20 percent of occupied apartments nationwide.

The Czech Foreign Ministry and US embassy officials are discussing concrete steps which would lead to either easing or abolishing visa requirements for Czech citizens in the future. Czech officials see the term 2007 as a possible date for the inclusion of the Czech Republic in the US visa-free programme, but the US embassy in Prague has refused to confirm the possibility. Of the new EU members only Slovenian nationals do not require visas to travel to the United States.

On an official visit to Slovakia, the Czech Prime Minister likewise discussed EU matters with his Slovak counterpart Mikulas Dzurinda. Both heads of government said they might support a possible extension of the two year deadline for the ratification process. The Czech Prime Minister said he was in favour of pushing ahead with ratification, but that he could not rule out certain modifications in Czech policy following Britain's decision to shelve its referendum. The Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said his country would do whatever appeared "meaningful", stressing that in the expanded European Union it was necessary to show flexibility and listen to the arguments of others.

One of the six new Gripen fighter jets which the Czech Republic has leased from Sweden is not operable due to a malfunctioning display panel. Swedish technicians are reportedly looking into the problem. The Czech military received the fighters only a few weeks ago. Another eight are to be supplied in the second half of the year. The planes have replaced an aging fleet of Soviet MiG-21s. They are being leased for 10 years for almost 20 billion crowns (850 million dollars).

The Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has told BBC TV that Britain's decision to postpone the ratification process of the EU Constitution would complicate the situation for the Czech government. Speaking on "News night" Mr. Paroubek said that coupled with the French and Dutch rejections, Britain's decision to suspend a referendum on the EU Constitution, made it impossible to continue with ratification plans as if nothing had happened. The Czech Prime Minister, who is strongly pro-federal, said it was now necessary to begin a debate on the Constitution's future. The Czech government had earlier expressed its resolve to forge ahead with an information campaign on the EU Constitution and was severely criticized by the opposition Civic Democrats who said the EU Constitution was dead and there was no point in wasting money on a campaign.

The Communist regime collapsed in Europe because of its own internal crisis but also due to the work of the Helsinki movements, so says former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Mr Havel spoke at the start of an international conference in Prague on Sunday, where some 30 experts and eyewitnesses began discussing the contribution of the Helsinki process to the collapse of the Communist bloc. The term "Helsinki process" is used to describe negotiations between the West and the former Eastern bloc, covering commitments in a number of fields, from armament reduction to the protection of human rights.

A new study by Price Waterhouse Coopers has shown that Czech car prices are apparently the lowest in Europe, standing 8 percent below the European average owing to lower interest in new cars. Following last year's accession to the European Union, experts predicted prices would grow as differences between prices in the EU narrowed. But, says Antonin Sipek, director of the Association of Automotive Industries, dealers began a price war as interest in new cars decreased rapidly. Over the past 12 months, the Czech Republic has been the only country in which prices have fallen, posting a 1.2 percent drop.

On the whole Czech car sales have been falling by an annual 9 percent over the past two years. The drop in sales has affected all vehicle categories.