Last week 15/09

Storks returned to Vysočina. US President Barack Obama delivered his big speech to Europeans on Hradčanské náměsti (Hradčany Square) in Prague. Škoda started manufacturing Fabias in India. The 141-million-crown spring Sportka jackpot lottery awaited its winner. "Economic forecasts are more pessimistic than we had estimated a few weeks ago," said OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría, commenting on his organization's new report estimating that the 30 most developed countries' economies will shrink by about five percent and at least one in 10 people in developed countries will be unemployed. "Managers Cutting Back, Mistresses in Crisis," the front-page headline of Mladá fronta Dnes's financial section informed readers; among other things, the reporters revealed that "when work goes bad, once-successful managers lose their sex drive." Prima Cool - "The TV channel for young and rich audiences" - began its broadcasts with Angel, an American TV show about vampires. Israeli President Shimon Peres visited the Czech Republic. The price of airline tickets went up. Family testimony revealed that Czech travel guru Jiří Svoboda, who recently froze to death in the Šumava mountains, was born in 1937, and was therefore about 10 years older than we thought. Kometa Brno returned to the Extraliga ice-hockey league. "It seems that efforts to diversify natural gas sources in Central Europe have received a major, if not deadly blow," Respekt journalist Jan Macháček commented in Hospodářské noviny on the shocking news that the Austrian company OMV had sold its almost-25-percent share in the Hungarian petrochemical giant MOL to Surgutneftegaz Russia, an opaque oil company with ties to Putin. A "gag law," prohibiting the media from reporting on calls between criminals and politicians intercepted by Czech police wiretaps, came into force. In Třebíč, the first city buses powered by natural gas started running. The timely arrival of doctors saved a young allergic woman who had collapsed after being stung by a bee in Tábor. The national football team drew 0–0 in its World Cup qualifying match with Slovenia. Unknown perpetrators beat national football association member Václav Chvála with metal pipes. Pražská teplárenská reduced its heating rates. Czech companies have taken Facebook by storm.

"We're definitely not going there on safari, but I really do not know the itinerary of the trip," replied parliamentary deputy Cyril Zapletal (Social Democratic Party, ČSSD) when asked by the media what work he and his three colleagues on the economic committee would do in Kenya later this month on a trip paid for by the state. The international manufacturer Steinel moved its hot-air gun production facility from the Liberec Region to Romania. Used car imports fell. A Nymburk court found guilty but did not sentence a hunter who had taken his daughter to a pond for the annual duck hunt last September but slipped and instead of shooting birds killed his child on the spot. Parliamentary deputies decided to suspend the privatization of the Prague airport. Environment Minister Martin Bursík signed a contract for the sale of 40 million emission credits to Japan. The media reported that 300 African migrants aiming to enter the European Union illegally had drowned when several ships sunk off the Libyan coast. The Prague Stock Exchange fell. "I underwent deep therapy and delved into my past lives; I lived 3,000 years before Christ in a country called Nifogaria and I worked as an administrator on an Egyptian ship - if this happens to you, light bulbs would start lighting up in your head, too," Michal David, the "king of disco" in the 1980s and again one of the country's most popular composers, told Lidové noviny's magazine. A Trutnov court dismissed a lawsuit against members of the artistic group Ztohoven, who had hacked into Česká televize's broadcast in 2007 and simulated a nuclear explosion on TV. Orco Property Group asked the court for protection against its creditors. Česká národní banka (Czech National Bank) Governor Zdeněk Tůma said at a conference in Prague that the Czech Republic would evidently adopt the euro sometime between 2013 and 2015. Statisticians calculated that Czechs spent nine billion crowns last year on services from female prostitutes. The Křemešník ski resort offered spring skiing. Meteorologists announced that April would be hot.