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The biggest annual festival of design in Central Europe, Designblok, gets underway in Prague on Wednesday. This year, the festival centre – the so-called Superstudio – will be located at the Výstaviště exhibition grounds and will traditionally offer a display of Czech and international designers and brands. I spoke to Jana Zielinski, the director of Designblok, and first asked her about the choice of this year’s main topic, which is freedom:

After years of deliberations, the Czech government on Monday voted in favour of lifting brown coal mining limits in the Bílina pit in northern Bohemia, where there are over 100 million tons of coal still in the ground. Although extended mining will not require the demolition of nearby villages, the locals are worried it will have a negative impact on their living conditions and may set a dangerous precedent.

A mass public drum session to remember the first Jewish transports from Prague on 16 October, 1941 was held in the Czech capital on Friday. The event took place at the former Bubny railway station, from which around 50,000 people were sent to their deaths. Called Drumming for Bubny, it was organised by the Memorial of Silence and DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

A conference exploring the uses of drones in filming and other fields kicks off in the Czech capital on Friday. Entitled Over Head Prague, the event will bring together international experts on unmanned aviation and feature accompanying events such as screenings and even a drone race. On the eve of the event, I asked organiser John Caulkins what had sparked the first such summit on drones in Prague.

Forty-eight hours after the country’s anti-organized crime squad conducted raids in several parts of the country detectives have filed charges against four people, the Social Democrat governor of the Olomouc region Jiří Rozbořil, two high-ranking police officers and an influential businessman. All are believed to have been part of a powerful local corruption ring.

Plans are afoot for a mass cull of the Czech Republic’s wild boar population. Mild winters are causing the animals to breed all year round, sparking a rise in numbers – and a related increase in damage to agricultural land and incidence of boars wandering onto roads.

Czech Ombudswoman, Anna Šabatová, has severely criticized conditions in the country’s asylum facility for refugees in Bělá-Jezová, north of Prague. After paying a visit to the facility on Tuesday, she said children there have worse living conditions than inmates in Czech prisons and called on the interior minister to address the problem without delay.

The winners of the annual Czech Press Photo competition were announced on Monday. The main prize was given to Mladá fronta Dnes photographer Jan Zátorský for his photo of migrants trying to cross the Serb-Hungarian border. The topic that clearly prevailed in this year’s competition was the migrant crisis.

The first group of Syrian refugees granted asylum in the Czech Republic will arrive in Prague on Monday. According to Czech Radio’s flagship Radiožurnál, as many as 70 were expected on a special flight but only three families, numbering 16 people, will arrive. The government opted to use the Medevac programme as the families’ children are to be treated in Czech hospitals.

Eleven years after the event a court will start proceedings over the privatization of Czech hard coal mining company OKD. And one of those following the trial closely will be Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka. As the then finance minister, he piloted the controversial sale of the state’s remaining stake in the mining company for what many say was a fraction of its real value.