Last week 21/09

The Prague Spring (Pražské jaro) international music festival opened with a performance of Má vlast ("My Homeland"), conducted by Antoni Wit. Patrick Ivuti won the Prague International Marathon. "The recession is abating, good news from the world is mounting," the business newspaper Hospodářské noviny informed readers in a front-page headline. A poll conducted by the daily Mladá fronta Dnes found that most business people in the country believe that the financial crisis will weaken. The Prague Stock Exchange rebounded. In protest against the Machiavellian tactics used to oust Mirek Topolánek's Cabinet, artist David Černý dismantled his sculpture, Entropa, at the headquarters of the Council of the European Union.
"If he does not act in accordance with the constitution and does not respect the decision of the legislative power, which is derived from the will of the people, it could be qualified as treason," remarked Senate Vice-Chairperson Alena Gajdůšková (Czech Social Democratic Party; ČSSD) in reaction to President Václav Klaus's statement that, in spite of both parliamentary chambers' approval, he would not sign the Lisbon Treaty yet. During their open house, Czech dermatologists examined patients' birthmarks for free. A windstorm knocked down trees around České Budějovice. Franz "Heart" Straka was appointed the new coach of the Czech national football team. Several hundred young people marched through the center of Prague calling for the legalization of marijuana. A motorcyclist from Prachatice died on the "deadly bend" near Hořice na Šumavě. Meteorologists informed the public that after a short period of rain and storms, May would be pleasant and warm.
"I don't know about you, but I do not come from apes. I know that just as certainly as I know there is a living God above me," President Václav Klaus's advisor and vice chancellor Petr Hájek pronounced at a "Darwin and Darwinism" seminar organized by Klaus's Centrum pro ekonomiku a politiku (Center for Economics and Politics). To mark the occasion of the annual Buddhist holiday Vesak, commemorating the birth, enlightenment, death and attainment of Nirvana of Siddartha Gautama, a.k.a. Shakyamuni Buddha, the Diamond Way Buddhist Center in Brno held an open house. The Czech airline Travel Service launched operations on the Polish market. Věnek Šilhán died. The Atlantis space shuttle set off on its Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission carrying onboard, among other things, a Czech flag and a copy of Jan Neruda's Písně kosmické (Cosmic Songs), brought by astronaut Andrew Feustal, whose wife is of Czech descent.
"In order to maintain the high security standards of both the Germans and the Czechs, we have introduced certain measures, among them these inspections," said the spokesperson for the Bavarian police, Werner Stopfer, explaining why, since the Czech Republic entered the Schengen zone, the German police have been stopping cars with Czech license plates randomly near the border without any evident reason and submitting drivers and passengers to long inspections, including strip searches and inspections of their genitals. Repairs to the Svaté Rodiny (Holy Family) cloistral church in Hlavíčkův Brod were finished. The town of Počátka dismissed a physician who was completely soused during his emergency room shift. The owner of the ČSOB, the Belgian bank KBC, found itself in serious trouble, and the stock exchanges stopped trading its shares. European industrial output dropped by 20 percent in March, the most since they started measuring the statistic in 1990. Svět knihy Praha (Book World Prague) opened for the 15th year running.
"There was a big difference between the situation and atmosphere in the Národní divadlo [National Theatre] on November 18 and the very next day," explained Václav Riedlbauch, former member of the Czechoslovak Communist party and today the minister of culture in Fischer's Cabinet, when he, as the head of the Státní opera (State Opera), initially banned his rebelling employees from joining in the anti-Communist strike in November 1989.
"We expected the head of the collective to lead us all, but Václav Riedlbauch had no courage and remained hidden in the background. I would like to have brave and high-principled people as our leaders, and to know I was in good hands, but tell me - where can we find them?" Ivana Pokorná, harpist and erstwhile member of the revolutionary strike committee of musicians at the opera, said about the new minister in an interview for Lidové noviny. Brussels gave the Czech Republic permission to subsidize its food producers. In the center of Olomouc, two travelers, who had travelled across 22 countries on four continents driving an old Škoda 1000MB, ended their journey around the world. The media reported that Komorous was returning. A crab with a four-meter leg span was displayed at the Moře a život ("Sea and Life") exhibition in Plzeň. The Transport Ministry issued a proposal that it be mandatory for Czech drivers to carry a flyer containing life-saving first aid instructions in their cars.