Eighty-four years ago, on June 10, 1942, the Nazis annihilated the Central Bohemian village of Lidice in retaliation for the assassination of Acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak parachutists. In one of the most brutal reprisals of WWII, they shot 173 men, deported the women to concentration camps, and murdered most of the children or took them away for Germanization. The village was razed to the ground.

The biggest event in football, the World Cup, gets underway this week. Czechia, appearing in the tournament for the first time in two decades, will take on South Korea in their first game in Mexico’s Guadalajara on Thursday. But what are the Czechs’ chances of making a splash in North America? I discussed their prospects with journalist Jiří Hošek of Canal+ Sport.

Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda is on track to become the first Czech citizen to visit the International Space Station. The European Space Agency has signed an agreement with the US space company VAST that could see him fly to the ISS next year, and take on the key role of pilot.

Czech linguists are helping preserve the language of one of Central America's Indigenous peoples. They are racing to record the stories of El Salvador's Nahuat Pipil before they disappear with the last generation of storytellers.

Two Czech Roman Catholic priests killed by the communist regime were beatified in Brno at the weekend. Jan Bula and Václav Drbola were hanged after a show trial in the 1950s, the darkest decade of the totalitarian era.

For generations, the town of Vamberk has been synonymous with lace-making. Now its most famous craft has earned a new distinction: the exquisite Vamberk bobbin lace has become the first Czech craft product to receive European protected geographical indication status.

The future of Václav Havel Library hangs in the balance following the departure of one of the institution’s co-founders, the late president’s widow Dagmar Havlová. Her withdrawal from the project follows internal conflict which led to the loss of its principal sponsors and 17-member staff.

A small zoo near the Central Bohemian town of Kladno is celebrating an exceptional breeding achievement. At the end of March, a young African hawk eagle hatched at the Zájezd Zoopark , one of only three zoos in Europe that keep the species. According to available records, it could be the first successful breeding of the bird in a European zoo. To learn more, I spoke with Daniel Koleška, the zoo’s head of conservation projects and education.

Award-winning Czech indie studio Amanita Design has unveiled its latest game, Phonopolis, a story-driven puzzle adventure set in a dystopian city built entirely from cardboard. More than a decade in the making, the game combines puzzle-solving gameplay with a distinctive hand-crafted visual style inspired by avant-garde art. What made the developers choose cardboard as the foundation of an entire game world? How do you turn stacks of paper models into a living digital city? And how did a project that took more than ten years to complete evolve along the way? I discussed these questions with Phonopolis producer Lukáš Kunce.

Hundreds of employees of Czech Television and Czech Radio staged protests on Wednesday against proposed changes to the funding of public-service media, warning that the measures could threaten their independence and financial stability.