Last week 31/2006

The scorching heat continued for another week; temperatures in big cities reached 45º Celsius. Al-Qaeda called on Muslims and Christians to fight a holy war against Israel. The price of petroleum went up. At the fifth attempt, the Chamber of Deputies failed to elect a new head of parliament. The post-election 100:100 stalemate entered its ninth week. Demand for air-conditioning, freezers, and refrigerators overburdened the electricity distribution network, and the high-voltage administrator announced a state of emergency in the Czech Republic. The necessity to relieve the overtaxed mains forced authorities to prohibit the Czech power company ČEZ from massive exports of electricity abroad. Hořela Mariina (Marie's Observation Point) in the České Švýcarsko National Park caught fire. "Heat destroys people and nature," wrote the daily Hospodářské noviny, commenting on the fire. Summer Vacation Dance School continued for the second week in Pelhřimov. CzechTek took place in the Doupov mountains. Court proceedings began in Prague with a former editor-in-chief of Respekt and subsequently one with former Information Minister Vladimír Mlynář, who is accused of abuse of power by a public official; he allegedly committed the crime by violating regulations while founding a company to manage the public administration portal for the Ministry of Information. The threat of avian flu surfaced in the Lednice Fish Ponds National Nature Reserve in the Břeclav Region. Raiffeisen International bought eBanka. Two days after MF Dnes reporters caught Police President Vladislav Husák driving 60 km/hour over the speed limit, reporters caught Interior Minister František Bublan doing the same thing. "I'm pretty concerned that tailing each other and measuring each other's speeds could become a sport in the Czech Republic," said Bublan, explaining why he is calling for exemplary punishment of the driver who followed his car and, according to Bublan, thereby „not only violated laws, but also acted dangerously.“ Drunk-as-a-skunk Ostrava Traffic Police Director Michael Čaš caused a car accident and after sobering up claimed - contradicting witness testimony - that when it crashed it wasn't him behind the wheel, but a „person close to him“ who ran away from the scene of the accident and whose identity he can't disclose because of familial relations. A dry spell stopped shipping on the Elbe river. For attempting to pay for food with a counterfeit 1000-crown bill produced on a black-and-white copier and printed on just one side, regional judges in Ústí nad Labem sent homeless Děčín man Jiří Dzurek to jail for five years.

The insurance market grew by 1.5 % – to 61 billion crowns. Seven hundred years passed since the Přemysl line died out. "It is a serious and major setback," said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, commenting on the fact that the World Trade Organization's five-year negotiations to help poor countries through liberalizing world trade collapsed due to Europe's unwillingness to subject its farmers to competition from poor Asian and African farmers. Superman returned to Czech cinemas. American specialists seeking an ideal location for a US missile base in Europe inspected what they needed to and left the Czech Republic, saying they would get in touch at the end of August. Floyd Landis won the Tour de France. An exhibition on the Roma Holocaust opened in the Ombudsman's seat in Brno. Tesco paid four billion crowns for Carrefour's Czech hypermarket chain. Czech Consolidation Agency member Radka Kafková woke up in Prague on Tuesday night and found she had been arrested; after three years of surveillance and gathering evidence against her, the police charged her with bribery.

"I'd like to see Respekt have more open communication with readers and also more light-heartedness and humor, because it is a magazine that is too preachy, biblically enraged, and deadly serious, the entire burden for creating humor lies primarily with illustrator Reisenauer – and that's simply not enough," Hospodářské noviny commentator Jan Macháček wrote in a questionnaire by Marketing a Media magazine. Summer Holidays in Telč began with songs performed by the Zimbabwe ensemble Iyasa. An international scientific team began deciphering the structure of Neanderthal DNA, which should definitively confirm or disprove the hypothesis that Neanderthal Man is the ancestor to modern humans. Czech paleontologists returned from Mongolia's Gobi Desert after a successful attempt to find a dinosaur skeleton. Pavel Nedvěd announced that he will remain faithful to Juventus despite the football club's forced demotion to the second division.

At the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, javelin thrower Barbora Špotáková set a new Czech record – 66 meters. Robert Plant and his Strange Sensation band performed at the Colours of Ostrava festival.