Last week 41/08

Hundreds of pilgrims commemorated St. Wenceslas's Day in Staré Boleslav. Paul Newman died. The crisis on the world's financial markets continued with the collapse of the biggest US savings and loan association, Washington Mutual. Stock markets around the world plummeted after the US Congress failed to approve a plan drafted by the Washington government to save Wall Street bankers; a few days later, American legislators approved a moderately changed version of the plan. A child playing with matches set fire to a prefabricated house on Masaryk street in Plzeň. In Europe, the first three collapsing banks were nationalized, and the current head of the EU, Nicolas Sarkozy, called on European politicians to follow the US lead and support declining confidence in the financial markets with a state injection of 300 billion euros. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek announced that further budget cuts would be necessary due to the crisis. The hotel and restaurant association warned that foreign tourists are leaving the Czech Republic because of concerns about the spread of hepatitis. „A nation without symbols is a nation without a past and thus without a future, too,“ pronounced Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, after a concert at the Národní muzeum (National Museum), at which leading public officials listened to a modernized version of the national anthem. A fisherman from Austria drowned in the Lipno lake. Czech banks stopped providing long-term loans to each other. At the German embassy, former Czech President Václav Havel received the Point Alpha Award, awarded by the Committee of German Unity to renowned personalities for their contribution to European unification. Seven Czech soldiers were wounded during an attack by rebels on their patrol convoy in Afghanistan's Logar province, and the defense department submitted a proposal to increase the number of Czech troops in Afghanistan from 900 to 1,200 soldiers. Leonard Cohen performed in Prague. Vojenské zpravodajství (Military Intelligence) confirmed Bezpečnostní informační služba (Czech Security Information Service, BIS) findings that an increased number of Russian secret service agents is operating in the Czech Republic, trying to influence public opinion against the planned construction of a US radar base. „Czech citizens pay us,“ replied Jan Májíček, who heads the largest local anti-radar group, Ne základnám (No Bases), when asked by Green Party parliamentary deputy Kateřina Jacques, „Dear sir, who is actually paying your organization?“ The number of iPhones in the Czech Republic reached 27,000. It surfaced that the xenophobic and nationalist ultra-right won Austria's parliamentary elections. The Svaz průmyslu a dopravy ČR (Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic) called on the government to adopt the euro by 2012; the Cabinet then announced that it would say by the end of the year when it would really say when it would adopt the euro. „We can recognize in that another signal for overcoming the deep rift in Czech-Sudeten German relations,“ the Sudeten German Landschaft's leadership wrote after Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, at the end of the Osudy zapomenutých hrdinů („The Lives of Forgotten Heroes“) project mapping the fate of German anti-fascists on Czech territory, called on Czechs not to forget the violence committed against Germans after the war. The Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) proposed to finally abolish the ban on selling Czech land to foreigners. The Přátelé Miloše Zemana („Friends of Miloš Zeman“) association opened an office in Prague.

„I think a certain Communist-era mentality still prevails - the individual, who was previously forced into the collective system, is now freed and thinks that everything is permitted; but underneath that are personal, mostly material interests,“ former constitutional court judge Vladimír Klokočka said, explaining why it is that in the Czech Republic - as he himself said in the media - „the limits of audacity have shifted beyond the boundaries of decency, ethics, and perhaps even beyond the boundaries of liability for punishment.“ Marek Heinz returned to the domestic football league wearing Brno's colors. In order to curb rising alcoholism among teenagers, Human Rights Minister Džamila Stehlíková proposed that restaurants and discos offer at least one non-alcoholic drink that is cheaper than beer. The domestic pollution register issued a press release announcing that the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air by Czech power plants and factories is not declining but is, in fact, rising. „On its own, ČEZ's largest coal power plant, in Prunéřov, releases more carbon dioxide than all the passenger cars here put together,“ the environmental organization Hnutí DUHA (Friends of the Earth Czech Republic) added. The Lešná zoo introduced a new service for visitors: the possibility of walking through the zoo gardens at night, shining flashlights into the cages to see what the animals imprisoned there do under cover of darkness. Meteorologists forecast that the sun would return following a cool weekend. The new Škoda Octavia rolled down a Parisian runway.