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Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka returned from an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Monday where he met with the country’s top officials and visited Czech troops serving in NATO’s Resolute Support Mission. The prime minister said Czech troops would remain for as long as they were needed, but stressed that the country must gradually accept a greater share of responsibility for its internal security.

Hundreds of people gathered in Prague’s Jiřího z Poděbrad square on Monday evening to condemn the hate-related attacks on a number of the city’s shops at the weekend. Several cafés and shops in the districts of Vršovice and Vinohrady, which are part of the Hate-Free project, were sprayed with Nazi symbols and threats. I spoke to Dani Kolský, owner of one of the vandalised coffee bars, and asked him what was his initial reaction when he arrived at his café:

The Czech Republic is to send thirty police officers to Greece on Friday where they will help fulfill the EU’s agreement with Turkey on the return of migrants who attempt to enter the EU via Greece. The officers will be assigned to the European border agency Frontex where they will be directly involved in the process of escorting migrants back to Turkey.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is headline news at the moment with US president Barack Obama in Germany to give the proposed EU-US deal his backing as thousands of Germans marched against it over the weekend. The Czech government has made its contribution to the debate – releasing a study on Monday which highlights the benefits a deal could bring to the domestic economy.

The Czech Republic has agreed to send some four million crowns in extraordinary humanitarian aid to Syria, Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Tlapa confirmed on Thursday after meeting his counterpart Faisal Mekdad. Humanitarian aid and the need to bring hostilities to an end in Syria were the two main issues discussed at their Prague meeting this week.

The New Jewish Cemetery in Prague’s district of Žižkov, best known as the burial site of the world-famous writer Franz Kafka, has just finished the renovation of nearly 500 of its tombstones and three valuable family vaults. The restoration works were funded from large part by the Norway Grants and amounted to over six million crowns.

The art of traditional shoemaking is slowly disappearing in the Czech Republic. The town of Zlín, home to footwear mogul Tomas Bata, is now trying to revive the tradition and the local school of trade and crafts hopes to open a class in the autumn.

Secondary school students in Teplice have launched a campaign in support of a Muslim classmate under pressure for wearing a headscarf. The school’s principal has received dozens of emails calling for her expulsion for “promoting Islam” but says the teenager is going nowhere.

The Moravian town of Příbor, the native town of Sigmund Freud, has been named Historic Town of the Year 2015. The prize, which comes with a one-million-crown cheque, honours towns and cities in the Czech Republic that have excelled in preserving and renewing their cultural and architectural heritage. Ruth Fraňková has more:

The National Security Council has rejected plans by the European Commission to introduce tougher gun control laws, following the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. The commission wants to make it considerably more difficult for individuals to hold certain firearms, among them some semi-automatic weapons. Czech officials are against the proposal, saying that Czech gun laws are already among the toughest.