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The leaders of the Visegrad Four – including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – are meeting in Prague on Friday to discuss the escalating refugee crisis. Until now, Prague and other members have been against EU quotas on the acceptance of migrants; the question is could that change?

Senator Hassan Mezian, who was born in Damascus but has spent most of his life in the Czech Republic, says he welcomes the solidarity now being shown by some Czechs to Syrian refugees. But the country’s only Muslim lawmaker strongly condemns efforts, including on the part of the president, to stir up anti-migrant feeling.

In recent weeks people’s perception of the migrant crisis appears to have changed and more Czechs are now contacting NGOs and charity organizations with offers of help. Charity collections have been established in Prague and Brno and a web page has been set up to coordinate the effort. I spoke to Magda Faltová, head of the Association for Integration and Migration, and asked if she too had registered the change-of-heart on the part of many Czechs.

The Czech Republic has promised to provide financial aid to Serbia to help it deal with a wave of refugees passing through the country on their way into Hungary and the EU. Speaking in Belgrade, the Czech interior minister also said he was considering a plan under which asylum seekers would be allowed to travel through Czech territory to Germany rather than being returned to Hungary.

Slag heaps of broken rocks and stone are the clearest legacy of the uranium mining boom in the Czech Republic. But one company’s plans to get rid of some of the unsightly waste has sparked a heated argument about what to do with them.

The Education Ministry is aiming to promote more sports activities for schoolchildren. To that aim, the ministry has set aside half-a-billion crowns to encourage children to participate in team sports. Teachers should also see pay rises and the ministry also wants to improve what’s on offer on cafeteria menus.

With the swelling number of migrants surging through Eastern Europe, calls have intensified in the Czech Republic for better EU coordination in coping with the escalating migrant crisis. On Friday Prague will host a meeting of the Višegrad Group states which should coordinate the position of the four countries on the migrant problem.

American national Kevin Dahlgren is back on Czech soil, following a ruling by the US State Department allowing his extradition. The 21-year-old is the sole suspect in a quadruple-murder of a family in Brno in May 2013; a court is now to rule on whether he will be remanded in custody.

It’s probably been a week to write off for ANO leader Andrej Babiš. He has had to intervene in the crisis surrounding Prague’s mayor; relations with his coalition partners in government appear to have deteriorated even further, and the latest public opinion polls suggest his party is losing its long standing lead. And then there was the Austrian lorry in which more than 70 immigrants apparently suffocated to death.

Zuzana Hejnová has won the Czech Republic’s first medal at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing, with gold in the women’s 400 metres hurdles. Indeed, despite suffering serious injury problems throughout 2014, she has become the first athlete ever to successfully defend the world title in the event.