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Next week’s Prague Pride festival will celebrate LGBT culture through over 100 events culminating in a parade through the city centre that has in the past seen 20,000 participants. The 2014 Pride, the fourth, is the first to take place under the auspices of a government minister. I discussed the significance of that support with festival head Czeslaw Walek. But I began by asking him what the thinking was behind the slogan of this year’s Prague Pride, Rise Up Against Homophobia.

Government representatives and opposition leaders on Monday failed to break the deadlock over the shape of a new civil service law which the country urgently needs. Although the two sides said they were ready to compromise on almost all counts, the creation of an all-powerful, top civil servant whose position would be proofed against political interference remains a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

Prague’s FAMU has been ranked fourth best international film school in the Hollywood Reporter’s annual Top Film Schools list. The publication praises the film and TV academy as an institution with a great tradition that has produced such names as the Oscar-winning directors Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel. It also highlights FAMU’s international programme, which is attended by around 100 aspiring filmmakers from around the world. FAMU dean Pavel Jech welcomes the news.

The hexa vaccine, a simultaneous vaccination for children targeting six serious diseases including whooping cough and Hepatitis B, has been administered in the Czech Republic for seven years. But increasingly, Czech Radio’s Radiožurnál reports, groups of parents are coming out against, for fear of “overburdening” their child’s immune system or of serious side effects.

Plans are afoot to compensate thousands of Czech women, many from the Roma minority, sterilised against their will between the early 1970s and the early 1990s. Lidové noviny reported on Friday that victims could receive up to CZK 150,000 each under legislation being prepared by the human rights minister and an NGO, the Czech Helsinki Committee. I asked the latter’s director Lucie Rybová how many victims were likely to benefit from the scheme, if it is approved.

Earlier this month, a group of Czech adventurers set out on a 900-km journey to the German port of Hamburg, peddling down the Elbe River on a boat made of plastic bottles. But their voyage has come to an early end as Germany’s river traffic rules made it impossible for them to continue. The group now wants to complete their trip on dry land.

Austria’s long serving Social Democrat head of government was in Prague Thursday for his second meeting with Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka in just over two months. The meetings are a sign that Prague wants to elevate relations with Vienna to a much higher level.

The European Union on Tuesday agreed on the toughest new sanctions so far against Russia. The move comes after the country was charged it had supplied heavy weapons to rebels in Ukraine and following outrage that international investigators were still being prevented from visiting the crash site of MH 17.

The price of cigarettes in the Czech Republic is due to rise by up to four crowns for a pack of 20. Wednesday’s approval of the price hike in the lower house followed a fall in the value of the crown that left the Czech Republic in contravention of a new EU guideline on excise duty.

The Czech Republic’s Export Bank and Slovakia’s Eximbank on Tuesday signed an agreement on cooperation in supporting joint Czech and Slovak business ventures abroad. The agreement aims to tap the potential of the now defunct label Made in Czechoslovakia without actually reviving it and to increase the competitiveness of Czech and Slovak firms simply through their joint presence on foreign markets. I spoke to the CEO of the Czech Export Bank Karel Bureš shortly after the signing ceremony in Bratislava.