Last week 27/09

Summer started and the vacation season began. Temperatures in the mountains dropped to freezing. Huge floodwater brought on by sudden rains killed 10 people in the Odra (Oder) river basin. Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) Chairman Jiří Paroubek's popularity fell by 10 percent. Heavy rains raised river levels. The media reported that the Iranian regime had started killing people protesting in the streets against the results of rigged elections in which former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got more votes than there were voters. Michael Jackson died. Windstorms snapped trees and knocked down electric power lines. Meteorologists warned that it would be warm until the end of July. Financier George Soros concluded that the world was over the worst of the current global economic crisis.
"It is a huge success," remarked Miloslav Druckmüller, a professor at the Vysoké učení technické v Brně's (Brno University of Technology's) mathematics institute, regarding the fact that a photo of a solar corona taken last August by Druckmüller's team during a full solar eclipse in Mongolia had appeared on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature. The Alexandrov ensemble sang and danced in Ostrava. The management of the steel giant ArcelorMittal in Vítkovice asked for a subsidy to pay the salaries of employees who are staying at home because it has no work for them. Jan Kareš, a trainer at a Prague fitness center, did 979 pull-ups in one hour and thus set a new world record. An instructor and his 30-year-old client met their death at the Mladá Boleslav airport during a tandem parachute jump; the investigation showed that the two became entangled in the primary parachute, and then the backup failed. The army finished testing Pandur armored personnel carriers. Boney M sang live in Břeclav. The media carried the news that New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped last December from a meeting in a Kabul suburb by a Taliban commando, had escaped from a secret compound in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan after being held hostage for seven months.
"I definitely won't confirm this information as I know nothing about that," replied Martin Mrnka, the director of the commercial television station TV Z1, when asked by the ČTK news agency whether he knew he will be replaced by Zdeněk Šámal, the former director of TV Nova's internet news service, next week. A Brigadýr L-60 sports plane crashed at Chrudim airport, killing the pilot. The crown strengthened prior to the summer holiday. The statues Veslař (The Oarsman) and Venuše (Aphrodite), which were discovered to have been bought by Adolf Hitler, disappeared from the Hluboká chateau grounds. A derailed freight train halted transport on the Olomouc-Přerov line. Prices of seaside holiday tours fell. News agencies reported that Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, a physician who had diagnosed herself and surgically removed a tumor from her own breast while working at the US scientific station base at the South Pole, died at the age of 57 after a decade-long struggle with cancer; upon her return, the disease continued to plague her, and she wrote an autobiographical book and conducted a series of lectures about her symbiotic relationship with it:
"Certainly I would prefer not to have it, but my cancer is a part of me, and has given my life color and contour. Besides, everyone has to get something; someone is ugly, another stupid - and I have cancer," she said at one of her lectures in 2001. Uproarious reactions from artists and members of the public forced the Česká filharmonie's (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's) future director Vladimír Darjanin to repeal his decision to dismiss Peter Nedoma as the director of the successful Galerie Rudolfinum. Hygienists warned citizens against a new threat: tapeworms from forest fruits. Under the slogan "Do not wait until the undertakers come for you," the first round of the government's campaign to promote healthy lifestyles was launched.
"The building is also environmentally friendly - we used the latest technologies and materials, including granite slabs imported from Brazil and tropical trees," said David Horák, director of Hochtief CZ's Moravian division, about his company's latest acquisition - the new natural sciences faculty building at Univerzita Palackého (Palacký University) in Olomouc. The European Union instituted a law forcing horse breeders to sign a confirmation that their horses would not be eaten. President Václav Klaus then announced that due to the EU's continuous efforts to regulate and restrict everything, he definitely would not sign the Parliament-approved Treaty of Lisbon. According to the STEM agency, people's confidence in Václav Klaus dropped to 55 percent, the lowest it has been since he took office in 2003. Owing to excessive amounts of blue-green algae, hygiene officials banned swimming in the local pond in Polná. Rumors began flying that Zorro was coming to the film festival in Karlovy Vary.