Last week 21/08

A 76-year-old Czech woman survived a fall from a 300-meter slope in the Malá Fatra mountains. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek's friend Radim Ochvat was named President Václav Klaus's new spokesperson. „If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have made it to the Castle,“ announced another of the prime minister's friends, powerful lobbyist Marek Dalík. The author of the cartoon character Krtek won a lawsuit against counterfeiters. Austrian police began to impose 50-euro fines on everyone who crosses the Austrian border with more than one carton of cigarettes bearing Czech stamps. Several hundred people demonstrated in the center of Prague by smoking marijuana under signs reading „It smells nice.“ Environment Minister Martin Bursík introduced a plan that makes burning coal more expensive. Gucci arrived in the Czech Republic. „When you take into account all the related matters - that the kitchens would have to be restarted and all the other technical, heating and lighting issues, you come to the conclusion that it is ineffective and that the work would not be worth the money spent, so you naturally decide that there will be no session,“ explained Senator Pavel Severa of the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL) to reporters, who had asked why parliamentary deputies and senators automatically took the two Fridays following the two national holidays that fell on Thursdays off. The Lidové noviny newspaper reported that a sausage stand had disappeared from Wenceslas Square. Google launched a Czech/English automatic translator. The debts of municipalities have begun to decline for the first time since 1993 and are now at 80 billion. A dispute flared up in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) over fees for parking cars. Mark Knopfler played in Holešovice, Kylie Minogue in Vysočany. The Finance Ministry has decided to forgive the pre-Velvet Revolution debts of around 150 farmers who had resisted collectivization and were hit with a special tax by the Communist state as revenge. The Czech post office, Česká pošta, has decided that it will finally deliver the 25,000 letters from the years 2001–2006 that were found discarded underneath a train station in Břeclav. Czech media expressed satisfaction with the further incarceration of Barbara Škrlová. Unemployment dropped again – this time to 5.2 percent.

„It isn't so that there is a small group of supporters of the radar and that the overwhelming majority is against,“ commented Jan Hartl, director of the public opinion polling agency STEM, according to whom roughly half of Czechs are against building a US radar base in the Czech Republic and the rest is more or less neutral. Persepolis won AniFest. „I would be concerned about that,“ said President Václav Klaus to the iDnes.cz news website when asked whether the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would undermine the validity of the Beneš Decrees. Zdeňek Bakala, the owner of the periodicals Průmyslník and Respekt, succeeded in floating his company New World Resources on the stock exchange. In Quebec, the Czech hockey team failed to beat the Swedes again. „We told them to stop it and asked what would they do to us if we were Roma,“ replied a young man who, with a friend, stood up to two Czechs who were doing the Nazi salute in Strakonice; one of the neo-Nazis then stabbed the other brave man in the neck from behind, damaging his spinal cord. Police began investigating Bonton for selling racist songs by the band Orlík. Maps made their way onto mobile phones. State prosecutor Zlatuše Andělová testified before the court under oath that, in an effort to avert legal action against Jiří Čunek, emissaries evidently sent by someone from the government exerted pressure by telling her „the independence of the judiciary must fall by the wayside, the government is at risk of collapsing.“ The Český statistický úřad (Czech Statistical Office) announced that, against all expectations, inflation is declining very slowly. Police found the remains of a bronze statue of a naked girl entitled Jaro (Spring), which someone had taken from the Ferdinand spring in Mariánské Lázně, cut up into pieces and then tried to sell at a Plzeň salvage yard. Czech astronomers captured the formation of a black hole in a distant galaxy. Oil baron Karel Komárek lost an arbitration hearing in Vienna against E.ON Ruhrgas over attempts by the German company to influence the Czech Republic's biggest oil and gas company, Moravské naftové doly. „I'll move my investment to Slovakia, where there are equal conditions for doing business compared to the Czech Republic,“ threatened Radim Jančura, the owner of Student Agency and competitor of České dráhy (Czech Railways), in connection with the Czech government's plan to funnel 12 billion crowns into České dráhy. Karel Brückner finally failed to persuade Pavel Nedvěd to run and kick balls at the European football championship. Journalists from the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes found nothing to criticize about the new Škoda Superb.