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Tropical heatwaves that we have seen over the past few weeks have been drying up rivers and reservoirs across the Czech Republic. The majority of the country’s rivers are down to fifty percent of normal levels and in some cases, such as Lužnice in South Bohemia, water levels have dropped to a mere 10 percent.

The great Ennio Morricone is due in Prague this weekend to record the score for the new Quentin Tarantino movie The Hateful Eight. Though the veteran composer is closely associated with the genre, his recording with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra will in fact be his first work for a western in many years.

Turning on the tap of incoming foreign investment in the Czech Republic was one of the main priorities for the new centre-left government when it came to power a year and a half ago. They accused the previous coalition of winding down the proactive policies that brought in big money investments and hundreds of new jobs. But after 18 months, how have the high ambitions played out.

There were reports on Tuesday that cycling in the city of Prague went up by some 25 percent in 2014. But as it turns out, the increase may not be as remarkable as initially thought. Vratislav Filler of the NGO Auto*Mat says that while interest in cycling in Prague has continued to improve, the jump registered was largely affected by a one-off dip in the figures.

Services were interrupted at one of Prague’s biggest railway stations on Wednesday after a train failed to brake properly, derailed and came to a stop inside the main building at Masarykovo nádraží – around 25 metres beyond the end of the track. An investigation into the incident has been launched and regular services are gradually resuming. Ian Willoughby reports.

The Czech Interior Ministry said on Monday it expects up to 7,000 illegal migrants to try and enter the country next year - double the amount who entered the Czech Republic so far in 2015. For that reason, ministers in the government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka agreed the Interior will now get almost a quarter billion crowns solely focusing on the migration problem.

A helium balloon carrying an acrobat rose in the air above Prague’s Industrial Palace on Monday, marking the start of the city’s annual street festival Za dveřmi or Behind the Door. Over the next five days, Prague will come alive with various street performances, including tightrope walkers and acrobats from all over the world.

Compared with industry, agriculture has been something of a Cinderella sector for the Czech economy. But there are now moves to try and give it a more dynamic character and encourage farmers to process more of the goods they produce and boost local employment in the process.

The team behind the upcoming feature-film “Anthropoid”, which tells the story of the famous 1942 assassination of acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, assembled at the Karlovy Vary film festival to promote the project, set to begin filming this summer in the Czech Republic. The film will star Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy as the legendary Czech and Slovak assassins responsible for the highest profile killing of a Nazi official during the Second World War.

The 50th Karlovy Vary International Festival, which opened in the west Bohemian spa town last Friday, has screened over 200 movies and welcomed a number of international celebrities. Radio Prague’s Ian Willoughby has been at the festival from the outset and I asked him how things have gone so far: