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Under a new campaign sponsored by the government’s Agency for Social Inclusion, Czech pubs, cafés and other venues are now able to display stickers declaring that they welcome members of the country’s minority communities. Called Hate Free Zones, they are part of the broader Hate Free Culture project, which began late last year. I asked organiser Lukáš Houdek what Hate Free Culture is hoping to achieve.

A report is heading towards the government which presents a gloomy picture of the country’s success over the last five years in trying to lift its worst off and most isolated members of society out of the plight they are in. These are often a mixture of inadequate education, bleak job prospects, and poor living conditions and housing. For the Roma minority, who are often among what is termed the socially excluded, there is also the added element of discrimination.

After nearly a year of negotiations, the first ethnic Czechs from Ukraine are set to move to the Czech Republic. Some 200 Czech expatriates have so far expressed interest in being repatriated to the old country due to the present situation in Ukraine. A special Czech consulate, which was temporarily opened in Odessa, on Monday started to issue passports and visas to the first applicants.

The upstart Dawn movement, the smallest political group in the Chamber of Deputies, appears to have collapsed over a matter of days. Though cracks were apparent already last month, only now a majority of its 14 MPs rebelled against leader Tomio Okamura. The MPs are unsatisfied with the apparent direction Dawn has taken and have expressed the desire to found a new party taking inspiration from a questionable source: the extreme-right National Front.

The Prague Shakespeare Company is now rehearsing a new production of Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night to premiere at Divadlo Kolowrat in March. The production is already garnering plenty of attention, not least because one of the main roles will be performed by Great Britain’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, Jan Thompson.

People living in the Czech border regions have gradually got used to the concept of cross-border medical care within the EU. For many locals, clinics in neighbouring Germany are closer and more expedient than the nearest medical facility in the Czech Republic, while many Germans and Austrians seek out dental care at Czech clinics which are significantly cheaper.

The Czech Ombudswoman Anna Šabatová is ringing the alarm regarding the conditions in which some senior citizens live in old people’s homes that fail to provide adequate care. The spotlight on several such homes has underscored a serious problem in a country with an aging population.

The police are taking the fight to road pirates and criminal suspects who try and avoid pursuit in the Czech Republic. In January alone, the country saw numerous such incidents, often ending in crashes and demolished vehicles. The country’s police meanwhile invested in almost 250 metal spike strips which can stop cars in their tracks. The interior minister himself this week took part in testing, acting the part of a bad guy trying to get away.

The Czech Republic is on the brink of a nationwide flu epidemic with all 14 regions severely affected. This year’s strain of flu is reported to be exceptionally aggressive and due to a mutation of the virus it has made the vaccine largely ineffective. The Bruntál region moreover reports four cases of swine flu with one patient in critical condition.

The Ostrava-based project Kola pro Afriku, Bikes for Africa, has just dispatched 200 bicycles to Cameroon. They will be used by locals to monitor elephant populations in an effort to combat the illegal killing of the animals for their tusks. But the latest consignment is just part of a bigger project that in recent years has seen Czechs donate some 15,000 bikes – many of which are today being used by schoolchildren living in rural areas in Gambia. I discussed the work of Bikes for Africa with one of its founders, Roman Posolda.