Last week 39/2007

News agencies reported that intense melting of arctic ice had opened up the Northwest Passage, a dreamt-of sea route around America. Fall began. A shortage of qualified labor raised entry-level salaries. The 15th anniversary of the founding of the largest and best-known Czech humanitarian organization, Člověk v tísni (People in Need), was celebrated on the Prague river island Střelecký ostrov. Actor Miloš Zavadil (67), who appeared in Starci na chmelu (The Hop Pickers), passed away in Gschwendthof, Austria. The Social Democratic Party’s leadership held a weekend march to the peak of Říp mountain, where they dished out goulash made with bangers.

„We must prepare for the worst - and the worst means war,“ said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, quoted in the media, evaluating the Iranian government's ongoing effort to obtain nuclear weapons. The Czech currency strengthened to a record high of 27.38 crowns to one euro. A leak from within the Czech power giant ČEZ revealed that the price of electricity would increase by up to 15 percent next year. Having stolen into a private company's office in Šternberk, then been apprehended by employees and tied up at gunpoint, a masked man identified himself as the mayor's son.

Milena Vicenová became the Czech ambassador to the EU, replacing the recently dismissed Jan Kohout.

„She wanted a harder pedal, which is not a routine demand or one which we are obliged to fulfill; unfortunately, the orchestra and conductor supported the soloist, and now we're facing protests and having to refund ticket money,“ said Pražský podzim (Prague Autumn) music festival director Pavel Špiroch, explaining why his organization rejected French pianist Heléna Grimaud's request to have a Steinway piano in Rudolfinum modified; Ms. Grimaud then refused to play her concert with Dresden's Staatskapelle symphony orchestra. Vinobraní, the annual grape-harvest celebration, kicked off in South Moravia. By government decision, rapper Radek Banga, also known as Gipsy, became the Czech ambassador for the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. Prague City Hall arranged with Libeň district hall, anti-Nazi resistance members, and the Czech Academy of Sciences to have a memorial commemorating the heroes who assassinated Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Libeň in 1942 erected there. Retail sales rose by 7.5 percent year-on-year. „Czechs didn't even lose their appetite for spending in the hot summer months,“ the business newspaper Hospodářské noviny commented on the sales increase. Communist Party chairman Vojtěch Filip declared on television that his party's parliamentary deputies would not vote to hand their fellow party member and colleague Josef Vondrušek over to the police, who want to investigate him on suspicion of tyrannizing and harassing political prisoners when he was a warden at the infamously cruel Minkov prison prior to 1989.

„Both delegations agreed that further cooperation was needed between China and the Czech Republic, particularly to expand business and political relations,“ declared the Social Democrats' press department after the party's chairman, Jiří Paroubek, met in Beijing with Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department of China's Communist Party Central Committee. „It is incomprehensible and non-transparent; for citizens without economic educations, the information regarding finance is beyond comprehension, which reduces the chances of its effective public control,“ reported Transparency International when characterizing the new Czech budget proposal. Eurotravel, a travel agency in Šumperk, went bankrupt. Following serious warnings from the European Commission, the Czech Education Ministry promised that school lunches would be healthier and would offer children vegetables besides just sugar, fat, and meat. Preparations for the celebration of Zdeňek Urbánek’s 90th birthday (October 12th) began. One-thousand mayors of Czech villages and towns signed a petition protesting Prague City Hall's proposal to host the 2016 Olympic Games in the capital and spend billions of public money on preparations. General practitioners held a one-day strike to protest the meager payments they receive from health insurers.

„They were heroes,“ said Mirek Topolánek, the first post-1989 prime minister to praise Czech brothers Ctirad and Josef Mašín, who fought against the Communists in the 1950s, and then shot their way through legions of soldiers and police officers to the free world in the West. During drills for the international NATO Day air show, two Albatros airplanes grazed each other lightly and without consequences over Břeclav, and the air force commander temporarily grounded all Czech army fighter-jet trainer aircraft. The Polish firm One2one bought the Czech company Advanced Telecom Services for 100 million crowns, thereby becoming the number-one firm in the domestic mobile technology entertainment sector.