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The Czech Republic is not a country that people normally associate with the Celts, but the fact is that they have a firm place in Czech history. Celtic culture has many fans in the Czech Republic who annually organize a Lughnasadh harvest festival in the small town of Nasavrky, east of Prague, to celebrate the country’s Celtic roots.

The Czech Ministry of Health wants to vaccinate more children against Covid-19 – and soon, with a view to vaccinated pupils being able to return to classrooms without tests in September. But some say the jab shouldn’t be given to children to boost overall vaccination numbers.

The warm weather and the easing of coronavirus restrictions have put Czechs back in a spending mood with the country’s largest bank Česká Sporitelna reporting a record number of transactions in June, beating even December’s Christmas sales. Despite the positive signal for the economy, pubs, bars and restaurants are still struggling to overcome the months of lockdown.

The Czech Republic’s first medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games was won on Monday by canoeist Lukáš Rohan in the water slalom category. Just hours later, fencer Alexander Choupenitch added another medal, this time bronze, breaking a century long spell on Olympic medals for the Czech fencing team.

Three Czech spa towns have just been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Mariánské Lázně, Františkovy Lázně and Karlovy Vary achieved the prestigious designation as part of a group that also includes spas in six other European states.

US historian Timothy Snyder is a leading specialist in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and World War II. He also takes a keen interest in contemporary international affairs and his latest book explores how Russia revolutionised information warfare. Recently journalist Filip Nerad interviewed the Yale academic for the programme Interview Plus on Czech Radio’s Plus news station – and their talk touched on much that relates to the Czech Republic.

The opening ceremony of the 32nd Olympic Games began in Tokyo at one o’clock on Friday afternoon (Prague time), in a stadium designed to hold tens of thousands but without a single sports fan in attendance, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also missing from the “Parade of Nations” were heartbroken Czech athletes and officials who had tested positive for Covid-19 after arriving in Japan.

The history of the Czech nation during the tumultuous twentieth century is the subject of a new major exhibition opening up this Friday in the National Museum in Prague. Around 2,000 square metres of space in the museum’s New Building are dedicated to the exhibit, which mixes historical artefacts with multi-media presentations to bring the period alive.

Located in the Hrubý Jeseník mountain range, about 240 kilometres east of Prague and close to the border with Poland, the town of Jeseník might not be a destination very high on the list of most tourists to Czechia. But the mountain town is a cradle of hydrotherapy.

The European Commission published its second annual report on the rule of law among EU member states this week, with particular criticism levelled at Hungary and Poland. Government officials from both states lashed out against the report, which they said was commissioned in bad faith. Czech lawyer Věra Jourová, the European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency, says it is based on a fair approach to all member states.