Last week 22/08

After sunny days came rain. The rivers rose. The battle over developing Rohanský island in Prague came to an end with Sekyra Group's submission of the highest bid of 1.7 billion crowns. The Czech government recognized Kosovo. From its Geneva headquarters, the WWF warned mankind that planet Earth is currently experiencing one of the biggest waves of losses of animal species in its history and that human plundering of nature is mostly to blame. „This is not a simplification for effect. It's just the way it is and the situation is very serious,“ WWF expert Rolf Hogan commented on the report for the Mladá fronta Dnes newspaper. Mud was flushed from the local pond in Nasavrky. The East Bohemian police administration took over the search for nine-year-old Jakub Šimánek, who disappeared from a park without trace 14 days ago, from the Havlíčkův Brod police. A Masarykova univerzita (Masaryk University) study revealed that almost 20 percent of Czechs have experienced age discrimination. President Václav Klaus vetoed the antidiscrimination law. Danica and Tomáš Kost celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on Prague's Old Town Square. The Prague Stock Exchange rose by 6.5 percent. „Twenty-one-year-old Jan Tamáš's hands are shaking. He softly says that he's not well. He and his colleague have lost eight kilograms combined,“ wrote the Právo newspaper in its front-page report on the hunger strike of two members of the Humanistický hnutí (Humanist Movement) who decided one week ago to stop eating to protest locating an American radar base in the Brdy forest. „I don't know anything about it and it doesn't matter, I'll just have to get by on less,“ said Senate candidate Svatopluk Karásek when asked by the Lidové noviny newspaper to comment on the Green Party's decision to cut party funding to candidates who are in favor of the US radar base, in contravention of the Green Party national council's decision. Oil exceeded the $130-a-barrel mark again. Fuel prices surged again. Newspapers reported that a terrible earthquake had struck the Sichuan Province in China and killed tens of thousands of people. Intel acquired a share of Internet Mall.

„I don't turn the other way when I see something I don't like,“ a 21-year-old man told Mladá fronta Dnes reporters in the hospital where he was being treated after having been stabbed in the neck from behind when he stood up to some skinheads shouting „Gas the Jews!“ on the street; the stab wound seriously injured his spinal cord; the man is paralyzed on the left side of his body, and doctors don't know yet if it is permanent; the Židovská obec v Praze (Jewish Community of Prague) has offered to pay for treatment in a spa, and for a lawyer, and to support the young man financially. After 12 years, Slavia Praha won the Czech football league. The Czech cookie producer Opavia admitted in its anxiously awaited annual report that Tatranky and Fidorka wafer products are no longer hot items. After 190 years, the dispute over the authenticity of the Zelenohorský and Královédvorský Rukopisy (Green Mountain and Royal Court Manuscripts) flared up again. Profits on pension funds plummeted. The ground in Prague's Stromovka Park caved in during digging for a road tunnel. „Now we're working on a theory inspired by the ant-hill: there are never traffic jams in there but there isn't any central control either; those closest to each other communicate with each other and the result is a continuous flow - that is a possible solution for the traffic situation in the whole country,“ said Ivo Vondrák, dean of the electrical-technical and informatics faculty in Ostrava, describing his scientists' most recent research work to the Hospodářské noviny newspaper. Sixty years passed since the birth of Indulona-brand creams. The intoxicated son of Industry Minister Václav Říman stabbed a student in his college dorm who came to his door and asked him and his friends to finally quiet down and let the other students study and sleep; the minister's son was charged with attempt to inflict bodily harm. Statistics revealed that Czechs began to save and stopped spending. Škoda Auto announced another increase in car sales. Scientists issued a press release saying that every tree growing in urban areas has a positive effect on children's health. During an attempt to ride a bicycle on a rope, circus artist Manuel „Berondini“ Berousek plunged to the ground from a height of six meters and died. Václav Havel's play Odcházení (Leaving) premiered at Prague's Divadlo Archa theatre. Boris Hybner became a professor.