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Final preparations are underway for the One World human rights documentary film festival, which starts in Prague on Monday. This year’s edition, the 19th, will turn the spotlight on the lives of migrants who have settled in Europe – and deliver all kinds of captivating stories from around the globe. Ahead of the opening, festival director Hana Kulhánková filled me in on this year’s curtain-raising film.

Czech national parks look like they will be governed by a framework of new rules that will boost their ecological development and protect them against commercial activities, but the battle is not yet over.

A monument has just been unveiled in Prague commemorating the support shown to Czech dissidents by the late Dutch politician Max van der Stoel. Forty years ago, on March 1, 1977, his meeting with Charter 77 spokesman Jan Patočka represented a significant breakthrough for the anti-Communist movement, then still very much in its infancy.

Taking part in the carnival parade in Rio is an unforgettable experience and all you need to do is don a mask and costume and join in the revelry. But only the very best dancers have the privilege of dancing at the Sambódromo. Among the few foreigners to join this elite group of Brazilian dancers for the 2017 parade competition was Czech actor and dancer Viktor Polášek.

Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec is taking the battle over whether to give Czech firearms holders the right to use their weapon against terrorists to Parliament. Although the proposal was not sanctioned by the government, the minister says he will fight for people’s right to hold a weapon and use it in self-defence even if it goes against present EU policy.

The annual Mene Tekel Festival, focussing on persecution by totalitarian regimes, is underway in the Czech capital, this year focussing on a number of topics, including the strength of the word and paths to freedom, featuring artistic work by students.

A Czech Christian activist has been released from a Sudan prison where he was serving a 20-year- sentence after an intervention on the ground by foreign minister Lubomír Zaorálek. Back home, the liberated Petr Jašek looked bright but appearances belied the ordeal he has undergone.

After the sudden, if not totally surprising, announcement that long time Social Democrat stalwart Jan Mládek, would be dismissed as minister for industry and trade at the start of the week, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka was expected to follow through by announcing a replacement on Thursday night. Those expectations were confounded.

Many looking for an alternative to state-controlled media in communist Czechoslovakia tuned into to Voice of America, which was founded 75 years ago this month. Over the decades a number of well-known Czechoslovaks exiles spoke to the nation via the US-funded radio station’s broadcasts.

Prior to being dropped in Nazi-controlled Bohemia to carry out the assassination of German governor Reinhard Heydrich, the Czechoslovak parachutists Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were based in the English village of Ightfield, where they befriended the local Ellison family. Now – 75 years after their daring mission – the pair are set to get a monument there. The man behind the campaign to honour them in this way is Englishman John Martin, the author of a book on Operation Anthropoid.