Last week 12/08

After Windstorm Emma came Windstorm Kristen. The Tibetan flag flew over the town halls of 400 Czech municipalities and cities. The Constitutional Court granted a request from the Czech Chamber of Commerce (Hospodářská komora České republiky) and restricted labor unions' power by intervening in the labor code. Czech polar explorers returned from Antarctica. A 40-year-old hiker went off a trail in an attempt to traverse the Krkonoše wilderness from Pec to Harrachov, and was found dead in the Sněžné jamy area by a rescue team 24 hours later. „If the information is classified, it is being resolved no matter who is involved,“ said detective Jan Koníř, explaining why his men blocked the website http://www.tunelplnykrve.cz after columnist Jan Urban had published a civil intelligence document related to blood trafficking that has been known about for two years and is still „classified“. The Czech Olympic Committee (Český olympijský výbor) alerted Czech athletes to a decision by the organizers of the upcoming Games in China that Chinese authorities will arrest, disqualify and imprison or deport anyone who criticizes the host country's Communist regime during the Beijing Olympics. Unemployment dropped below six percent. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek visited Israel. To the surprise of a number of legislator-voters, it surfaced that Czech President Václav Klaus spent his inauguration night not with his family but with his new 25-year-old mistress in a hotel outside of Prague.

„It's a change that's been a long time coming,“ remarked Radek Stavěl, spokesperson for Czech Coal, commenting on the fact that one of the biggest Czech oil barons, Antonín Koláček, has given up coal mining for good, sold all of his shares from the wild privatization days and - in his own words - „started to devote himself to Buddhism completely.“ After the central banks of the United States, the European Union and Canada decided to pump a quarter of a billion dollars into the troubled banking sector and thereby bring it out of global crisis, the Prague Stock Exchange shot up. Hospodářské noviny announced that meal vouchers might survive. After enjoying great box office success, the One World film festival expanded its program by adding a number of screenings. The Blind Boys of Alabama returned to Prague after a two-year absence. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg set off to a spa to recover from his recent heart surgery. The European Parliament celebrated its 50th anniversary. „We feel a certain degree of sensibility for the information we request, and we obviously give our clients a choice as to whether they share it with us or not,“ announced mBanka, reacting to objections from dissatisfied clients who, in order to open an account, are obliged to tell the bank their highest level of education, whether they are married, and the names of their parents; the Office for Personal Data Protection (Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů) has launched an investigation into mBanka's intrusive information requirements. Czech National Bank (Česká národní banka) Governor Zdeněk Tůma estimated that the Czech economy had grown by four percent last year. Police revoked the driving license of parliamentary deputy Ondřej Plašil (Civic Democratic Party) for 14 months after he was caught driving drunk. Čestmír Šikola, war hero, telegraph operator for the resistance group Clay-Eva and later a political prisoner of the Communist regime, passed away in Malá Skála. Upon his return from Syria, Jiří Paroubek, chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party, announced that he would now go to Russia to meet with officials there on how to thwart US plans to build a radar base in Brdy. Two polar bear cubs were born in a cage at the Brno zoo. Parliament accommodated the president's veto and did not pass a law allowing hunters to torture foxes. „Seeing animals as living beings ‚with souls‘ smacks of pseudoscience and obscurantism,“ well-known soul expert and Právo commentator Petr Uhl warned activists advocating change in current laws classifying animals as „things“. Czech freemasons from two branches - the Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic (Veliká Lóže České republiky) and the Grand Czech Orient (Veliký Orient Český) - merged during a conference in Prague. Spolana Neratovice ended the two-year liquidation of its two abandoned and life-threateningly dioxin-contaminated buildings. Žatec hops-growers exported their first batch of hops under their plant's new EU-protected label. Vysočina Regional Administrator Miloš Vystrčil (Civic Democratic Party) called on the government to build another nuclear power plant in Vysočina next to Dukovany in the interest of improving the country's energy development policy. „Most people think a million dollars would change their life. But that's not true. I know that from my own experience,“ said Jack Nicholson in an interview for Hospodářské noviny’s magazine. Pensions were increased by 465 crowns due to inflation.