Meteorologists told citizens that the fall would not remain so beautiful for long. Ivan Jirous celebrated his 65th birthday. The government came up with a proposal to vaccinate children against pneumococcal disease for free. Emil Filla's Zátiší s mandolínou (Still Life with Mandolin) was auctioned in Prague for 11 million crowns. Politicians' salaries fell. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received her Czech counterpart, Jan Kohout, in Washington and explained to him that the United States withdrew from its plans to locate a radar base in Brdy not because of pressure from the Kremlin but because there are more advantageous ways of providing for its security.
"Our relationship with America has reached its limits, and it would be a mistake to ruffle the feathers of our allies in Europe. Because who will we be we left with? The Russians in Karlovy Vary," said former Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra when asked by Lidové noviny whether his positive attitude about the Lisbon Treaty since the radar plan's cancelation is akin to "the wolves howling after Munich."
"The Czech Republic must fear the over-regulated European Union much more than Russia, where the current political system and level of freedom are the best and highest they have been in the last two millennia in its history," said President Václav Klaus, as quoted in the business daily Hospodářské noviny, at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in New York where he was representing the Czech Republic. Domestic public confidence in President Klaus rose from 59 percent in August to 63 percent in September. Czech Airlines cancelled flights to New York and reinforced connections to Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Tashkent. The Freedom Not Fear initiative organized a "march against fear" in Prague.
"I ask myself how I would react if some degenerate authority forced me to decide between cooperating against my will or leaving the work I love forever - and I'll probably never find the answer," theatre director Daniel Špinar told the daily Mladá fronta Dnes. The Mercedes in which Reinhard Heydrich met his death following the Czechoslovak paratroopers' assassination attempt was discovered in a barn near Hradec Králové. Like every year, the Czech public celebrated European Carfree Day. High cocoa bean prices made chocolate more expensive. Recycling centers began purchasing used paper again. Pope Benedict XVI visited the Czech Republic and activists from the group Condom Positive distributed 10 thousand boxes of condoms bearing the words "Papa Said No! And You?" to voice opposition to the pope's rejection of condoms as a precaution against AIDS. Czech beer drinkers went to Munich for Oktoberfest.
"You're lying. For 50 years, I contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain to the best of my abilities. Unlike you," replied former President Václav Havel to Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) chairman Jiří Paroubek, who called Havel "a man who desires a world of iron curtains" for his support of a US radar base in the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic defeated the Croats and advanced to the finals of tennis's Davis Cup for the first time in 29 years. The European Commission wrote to the Canadian government warning that unless it abolishes visas for Czechs by the end of the year, the EU would retaliate either via trade or financial outlets. Buddhist coal baron Antonín Koláček interrupted his tour of spiritual places in Asia and returned to his homeland to try to sell Czech Coal (formerly Mostecká uhelná společnost) to the partly state-owned ČEZ corporation for 50 billion crowns; Koláček and his companions are being investigated by the Swiss prosecutor's office due to their role in the Most-based company's privatization and are suspected of having secretly and illegally "borrowed" one billion crowns from the company's own coffers to "buy" it. Finance Minister Eduard Janota submitted to parliament the 2010 budget, which cuts the original 230-billion-crown deficit to 157 billion crowns.
"Hungary is spoken of as a frightening example of extreme indebtedness. In an honest comparison, however, their public deficit equates to just half of ours; it almost seems that I owe them an apology for the talk of our accounts being ‚Hungarianized‘," Minister Janota told the weekly Euro. A woman was killed in an explosion at a nursing home in Týn nad Vltavou. The law school in Plzeň was discovered to have bestowed degrees for wholly plagiarized dissertations. This year's Jaroslav Seifert prize (Cena Jaroslava Seiferta) went to Ludvík Kundera. The best tree climbers competed in Lomnice. Pilsner Urquell began testing equipment that taps beer into plastic cups through the bottom, and the newspaper Právo carried a report headlined "Beer Revolution." Gustav Mahler became an honorary citizen of Jihlava.
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