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Summer holidays when people were able to kick back without once thinking about work are increasingly becoming a thing of the past.

Temperatures around the Czech Republic reached record highs at the weekend with the highest, 39.8 degrees, Celsius registered at two municipalities outside the Czech capital. The sweltering heat has gripped the Czech Republic now for weeks. While welcomed by holiday goers, the drought comes with a cost: a severe drop in water levels, the danger of forest fires and losses in the agriculture sector. Jan Velinger has the details.

The project Plzeň – European City of Culture 2015, which kicked off in grand style in January this year, is now at the halfway point. What have been the most popular events in the West Bohemian city? And how successful has the project been so far? I put these questions to Radovan Auer, the Director of Marketing and Communication of Plzeň 2015:

10:55 on Thursday morning was an important occasion in the history of radio in the Czech Republic as it was the exact moment that full digital broadcasting was launched in the country. The new network, named DAB Praha, carries nine Czech Radio stations, some of which were previously only accessible online. For now the service is just available in the capital and Central Bohemia, but there are plans to roll it out to other parts of the country in the next few years.

The DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague is currently hosting an exhibition called TRIAL, inspired by the second trial with the Russian businessman and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which took place between the years 2009 and 2010. It is the first time the exhibition is being shown outside of Russia. I asked Michaela Šilpochová of DOX to tell me more about it:

Czechs have often been criticized by international economic institutions, such as the OECD, for their reluctance to seek work far from their homes. Commuting is not, it appears, part of the national psyche. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has now come up with the idea of encouraging more mobility among the unemployed by allowing them to claim at least a portion of their transport costs.

The fifth Prague Pride festival of LGBT culture gets underway on Monday and will culminate in a colourful parade through the city on Saturday August 15. Organisers are promising some 120 events, including discussions, film screenings and a pop concert featuring Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst. To find out more – including what this year’s theme is – I spoke to Prague Pride spokesperson Bohdana Rambousková.

President Zeman‘s plans to attend commemorative events in China marking the end of WWII in the Pacific has made the Czech Republic the only country to break EU ranks on a proposed boycott of the celebrations. EU leaders are reportedly staying away from the events due to tensions between China and Japan, and according to Tuesday’s Hospodářské noviny which carried the story, the fact that the Czech Republic threw a spanner in the works of a coordinated EU position because of its president has not been well-received. I asked Jakub Janda of the European

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.