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The city of Prague has a new, rather unusual attraction: a special operational tram that lubricates the tracks to make trams run more quietly. The Facebook page devoted to the bright orange vehicle has attracted nearly four thousand followers to date.

Unrest at the Bělá asylum facility north of Prague at the close of last week, in which migrants repeatedly tried to force their way out of the enclosed premises, breaking two security gates in the process, has raised public concern with regard to the growing number of illegal migrants on Czech territory and the country’s preparedness to deal with the migrant crisis.

Prague-born Ája Vrzáňová-Steindler, the women’s world champion in 1949 and 1950 in Paris and London, has died at the age of 84. At the height of her career, Vrzáňová-Steindler was an ice skating legend; in 1950 she defected to the West and eventually settled in the United States.

The Czech coalition government has moved to tighten the rules for the financing of political parties. The proposed measures include a 3 million crown ceiling on donations from individual sponsors and a cap on the amount of money that parties can spend on election campaigns. The draft bill also envisages the setting up of an independent body which would supervise the financing of political parties. I asked political commentator Jiří Pehe how he views the proposed measures.

A team doing research at the former Terezín concentration camp in north Bohemia have just presented remarkable findings in the form of previously undocumented inscriptions made by Jewish prisoners in the walls of the fortress. The Czech-German group behind the ongoing Ghettospuren (Ghetto Traces) project had previously discovered valuable items in attics and cellars at Terezín.

Thirty-two-year-old Nabire, one of the last Northern white rhinos on Earth, died at Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic on Monday night from complications from a ruptured cyst. Her death brings the number of surviving Northern white rhinos to just four: three live on the Ol Pejeta Reserve in Kenya and one at the San Diego Zoo in the US. Jan Velinger has the details.

The head of the Czech Roman Catholic church has criticised plans to host events in August’s Prague Pride LGBT festival at the city’s parish of St. Salvatore, headed by priest and professor Tomáš Halík. In a statement, Cardinal Dominik Duka said it was inappropriate for the church to be involved with events advocating for interests sharply at odds with its own.

Once a fairly rare species in towns and cities, cyclists are increasingly common in the Czech Republic even in cities and hilly areas where the habitat is not so welcoming. Proposed changes in the law from the Ministry of Transport are now looking to give them higher priority with their own cycle roads in some city centres and help fill in the gaps between existing cycle routes.

The Czech Republic is calling for closer regional cooperation in dealing with the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe. At a meeting in the south Moravian border town of Mikulov, Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec and Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Leitner discussed measures that would help stem the flow of illegal migrants from the south-east.

A proposed amendment on the holding of firearms in the Czech Republic will not require consumers to register airsoft pistols or rifles in the near future. Some had hoped the sale of airsoft guns – which are often almost perfect replicas of existing weapons – should also be regulated, not least given how often they are used in armed robberies.