Last week 17/2007

Shooting stars lit up the sky as the Earth passed through the Lyrid meteor shower.

The weather was cooler. The yachting and boating season began on Máchovo jezero. President Václav Klaus met with Czech bishops in Lány to discuss the state's relations with the Catholic Church.

Legendary footballer Andrej Kvašňák died. According to experts, „Beware of Wood Ticks“ warning signs placed in Czech forests should stop the epidemics of tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme disease. The Czech Republic has one of the highest incidences of these diseases in Europe. Decathlete and 2006 Sportsman of the Year Roman Šebrle became the mascot of the Interspar supermarket chain.

Meteorologists warned the public that catastrophic drought is threatening the Czech Republic. „If it is hot and doesn't rain in the next three weeks, it could have wide-reaching results,“ the director of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Ivan Obrusník, told the media. Ninety-five years passed since the sinking of the Titanic. Forests started to burn in the sunny, rainless weather.

The media reported that Chinese Communists, in an attempt to prove their „ability to change the weather with human effort on even the world's highest elevated plane,“ started to artificially cover Tibet with snow. Omnipol gained control of Poličské strojírny, a factory for the production of explosives. The Hussite Church suspended its Prague Bishop, Karel Bican, for falling in love with a man who he helped after the man was released from prison.

The Pope celebrated his 80th birthday. „Yes,“ was Sparta defender Tomáš Řepka's reply when the daily Právo newspaper asked whether he would rather die than put on a Slavia jersey. A beekeepers' convention began in Fryšták.

A group of boaters beat up a Šumava National Park warden who didn't want to allow them to launch their boat on the still-closed section of water by the Soumarský bridge. The Transport Ministry introduced a new position on Czech trains – that of „cleanliness inspector“. Petr Kellner headed to Russia.

The Day of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust took place on Prague's náměstí Míru square, and after three in the afternoon dozens of people read out the names of those who did not survive the Shoah.

„I was sitting at an editorial meeting of the newspaper where I was working, carefully examining my co-workers and asking myself which of them would be capable of sticking a knife into my chest if – and it cannot be ruled out – a new pogrom were to take place. And which of them, though not capable, would readily applaud,“ said Jewish-Romanian writer Eugen Luca, the author of the just-published book Pogrom, discussing the bloody attacks on Jews in Romania's Jasy in June 1941, in Lidové noviny.

Polná was named the 2006 historical town of the year. The Nedvěd brothers stopped their mutual name-calling and announced their joint artistic comeback. After a one-day union strike the management of the Škoda car factory agreed to a wage increase of 12 percent instead of the originally proposed 10 percent. According to real estate agencies, the price of apartments increased by hundred of thousands of crowns.

Police in Cizkrajov ordered a woman who repeatedly tyrannized her husband, from thein common flat. She was drunkenly chasing him around the flat with a knife and screaming that she was going to kill him. The White House announced that President George Bush will come to Prague in June to talk to local representatives about the planned missile defense base. Graffiti artists and admirers met in Zlín.

„We are not completely out of the woods yet, but it will most likely be possible to save slivovice,“ Christian Democratic Euro MP Jan Březina reported back to the Czech Republic. Březina has devoted his political life to a fight against a tragic European Parliament mistake, when its members inattentively only designated a beverage distilled from potatoes or grain to be a „spirit,“ threatening the Moravian plum brandy industry.

According to Czech National Bank data, buying fever increased in the Czech Republic. The city of Děčín launched a search for the owner of a 15-metre-long steel bridge in the Březina district that nobody has laid claim to. Miroslav Žbirka entered the Slovak music Hall of Fame.

Shares on the Prague Stock Exchange pushed the main PX index up to 1,814 points on Friday 13th, breaking all previous records. In Stockholm, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek looked through Codex Gigas – also known, because of one of its illustrations, as the Devil's Bible – which the Swedish Army stole from Prague in 1648, taking it to Scandinavia.

ČEZ announced that the price of electricity would increase by 25 percent in the near future. Scouts collected garbage on the banks of the Dřevnice River. During the country-wide Defense of Pencil Crayons project artist Eva Toulová (17) drew a picture entitled The Meaning of Life using pencil crayons on a 10 x 11 meter canvas.

Hospodářské noviny quoted the Austrian media's discovery that „every 10th Viennese can neither read nor write.“ In a referendum, a majority of the citizens of Prague 1 rejected the local city hall's plan to raise a statue of Sigmund Freud on Kozí plácek.