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Prague Castle is to beef up security following last Saturday’s incident in which activists, posing as chimneysweepers, managed to breach security and hung a pair of red underpants in place of the presidential seal. While the Castle insists the proposed measures have been on the cards for months, Czech president Miloš Zeman conceded that the current affair will speed up the discussions.

The Czech Republic, flanked by a handful of other countries, was soundly defeated in a Brussels vote over the obligatory share out of refugees on Tuesday. But the Czech government is not taking the reversal sitting down. Prague is now pressing for practical steps to address the current crisis.

For weeks the Visegrad Four countries – including the Czech Republic – were adamant they would oppose mandatory quotas but on Tuesday, Poland surprised its partners by completely changing course, voting with the majority of EU interior ministers in favour of the plan. I asked political analyst Jiří Pehe why most of the EU opposed the voluntary acceptance of refugees which had been pushed for by the former communist bloc countries.

Intensive last-minute talks ahead of Tuesday’s EU summit of interior ministers in Brussels failed to bridge the divide between Western EU leaders and the Višegrad group over the proposed imposition of mandatory migrant quotas. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland remain firmly opposed to the idea, and Prague has even suggested that the EC proposal may be in violation of European law.

The Czech Film and Television Academy has chosen Home Care, a new feature film debut by director Slávek Horák, as its choice for the 2016 Academy Awards. The film snagged two awards at the International Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the summer and also received a positive review from Variety magazine. The producers are keeping their fingers crossed it will be well-received across the pond and could get an Oscar nomination to boot.

Pranksters from the art group known as Ztohoven made their mark at Prague Castle at the weekend when they replaced the country’s presidential flag with a giant pair of red boxer shorts. The move, the group said, was in direct protest to President Miloš Zeman. His spokesman condemned the act as dishonourable.

The newly-constructed Blanka tunnel complex will open to traffic on Saturday, September 19th. The longest city tunnel in Europe was to have been the pride of Prague, but it has been dogged by problems, opening four years late and way over budget.

The Danish beer company Carlsberg, which distributes the popular Czech Staropramen brew in Sweden, this week recalled all Staropramen beer on tap from 680 Swedish bars and restaurants. The move came after two people tasted the beer and suffered blisters and mouth bleeding as a result.

A new memorial to the world famous graphic designer and artist Ladislav Sutnar has just been unveiled in his birthplace Pilsen. The enlarged set of bright building blocks for kids, designed by Sutnar in the 1920’s, is located in front of Pilsen’s Faculty of Design and Art and is part of a long-term project aimed at reviving Sutnar’s memory in his homeland.

While the immigrant crisis has opened up a wide rift between the Czech Republic and other Central European states on one side and the traditional EU agenda setters in Western Europe, France and Germany on the other, differences within some Czech parties about the crisis and the possible solutions have also emerged.