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Measures to better protect so-called soft targets against terrorism are being rushed into place in the Czech Republic after the wave of recent attacks in Europe suggest targets have shifted from big headline events and locations to sites where many people gather or where attackers believe they can make a point.

Up to 115,000 poor people are living in 600 ghettos around the Czech Republic, according to human rights minister Jiří Dienstbier. The cabinet has just backed his plans to help such people – many from the Roma minority – by redirecting part of their housing benefits away from often unscrupulous landlords and toward improving their homes and paying for services. I asked Kumar Vishwanathan, a community worker in North Moravia, who the owners exploiting the poor actually were.

A freshly released mobile app tells users the stories behind nearby sites linked to 20th century Czech history, as well as allowing them to trace often dramatic events on specially created routes. Entitled Místa Paměti národa (Memory of Nations Sites), the free app is the work of the NGO Post Bellum, which for years has been publishing the testimonies of witnesses to modern Czech history. I spoke to the group’s Jana Háková.

The Czech Republic is to take in some 80 refugees from Turkish refugee camps under a European Union agreement. The country received details of the applicants earlier this month, and each will be vetted by the security services. Following the recent terrorist attacks in neighbouring Germany, some have already expressed opposition to their arrival – namely ANO leader Andrej Babiš.

Thirty-one Iraqi helicopter pilots wrapped up a 14-months training session at the Pardubice pilot training center on Sunday. The course was for beginners who received complete training and who are now ready to be deployed in the fight against Daesh in their homeland.

A meeting of the tripartite – government, union and employer representatives – failed on Monday to reach a consensus on increasing the country’s minimum monthly salary. While all sides agree a rise is needed, the question is how high.

A newly-released study from a team of scientists has warned that efforts to reintroduce the Eurasian lynx into the Šumava region may end in failure. A lynx population was brought to the area from Slovakia back in the 1970s. By the 1990s, around 100 animals lived in an around the national park. But an upsurge in poaching has seen that number reduced to around 65. I spoke with Miroslav Kutal of environmental group Hnutí duha – which has just held a three-day international event in southern Bohemia focused on the future of the lynx in Europe – and

Czechoslovak RAF veteran and one of the country’s last remaining war heroes, General Emil Boček, took to the skies in a Spitfire on Thursday more than seven decades after his last flight in the iconic plane. The 93-year-old veteran took off from the Biggin Hill airport in Kent, and spent twenty-five minutes up in the air, piloting the aircraft himself for a short while once it was airborne.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s hardline nationalist election rhetoric is reverberating far beyond US borders. His words, in a New York Times interview, regarding the possibility of conditional US support for NATO allies in times of need has evoked a strong negative response in Europe and sent ripples of unease around the post-communist bloc.

The small town of Studénka is just about to mark the first anniversary of its second rail tragedy in a decade. There are plans to do away with the level crossing where three people died when a high-speed train collided with a truck there last year. Meanwhile, two dozen rail crossings around the country are set to be the focus of a major renovation project.