Last week 42/09

A record-breaking temperature of 27 degrees Celsius was measured at a weather station in Brno. The Indian summer ended and the first snow fell in the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains). It was reported in the media that the Irish had approved the Lisbon Treaty. Via teleconference afterward, Prime Minister Jan Fischer sent word to Brussels that the Czech Republic would ratify the treaty by the end of this year. President Václav Klaus announced he would be flying to Russia. The number of personal bankruptcies in the country tripled in the last year. The ranks of unemployed Czechs increased by one-tenth of a percent to half a million people.
"The big boys from big business who stand in the background pulling the strings think there has been enough of Paroubek and Topolánek - but I don't intend to fully defer to that," former Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek told Mladá fronta Dnes and added, when asked to identify the big boys, "You don't really expect me to answer that." Agra Zvíkov, a large farm in South Bohemia, decided to discontinue the 35-year-old local practice of burning young calves' horn buds. Coffee prices rose on the commodities market. A newly reconstructed building in the center of Prague collapsed and buried four bricklayers in the rubble. Sparta defeated Slavia 1–0 at the Eden football stadium. The Czech Republic slid from 32nd place to 36th in the annual Human Development Report, wherein the UN measures the quality of life in countries around the world. Police began investigating the law faculty at Plzeň's University of West Bohemia (Západočeská univerzita), which is suspected of running a bogus academic degree racket and of bestowing diplomas upon many prominent local politicians, who didn't actually study for their degrees, on the basis of plagiarized diplomas.
"I don't remember who taught me law, who advised me on my diploma thesis or who authored the opponent's opinion. And I've lost my transcripts," Chomutov mayor and notorious warrior against Roma "defaulters" Ivana Řápková (Civic Democratic Party; ODS), who graduated from Plzeň's law school in 2005 and whose master's thesis is missing from the school library, told reporters. After acquiring the Eldorado chain, the head of the Czech financial group PPF expressed interest in buying another Russian retail network, Technosíla. Car sales fell. The Transport Ministry abolished the driver's obligation to use winter tires on the D1 highway in the winter months. The government spent 20 million crowns to buy the location of the former concentration camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu, where Czech Roma were corralled and guarded by fellow Czechs during the Protectorate era and then later transported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The number of obese people in the Czech Republic rose to 1.5 million, and the local branch of the Coca-Cola group announced that it was not responsible. Accor, which offers food vouchers to employers, acquired its competitor, Exit. The percentage of Czechs with "absolute confidence" in parliament dropped to between two and three percent, a value which experts said was akin to the "Ukrainian level"; confidence in President Václav Klaus, however, rose to 70 percent.
"The only person I feel total confidence in is Mr. President, a fellow with authority and opinion. And so I ask: why aren't there more like him?" singer Lucie Bila told Mladá fronta Dnes. During a haphazard hunt in the Pelhřimov region, a drunken 60-year-old marksman shot and seriously wounded a man 18 years his junior. Náměšť opened a skate and bike park. Some 168 drummers gathered on Prague's Náměstí Republiky square to drum up attention for the Postavme školu v Africe ("Build a School in Africa") project in the hope of impelling passers-by to make a donation. In a speech at the Žofín palace in Prague, Czech National Bank (Česká národní banka) Vice-Governor Miroslav Singer told businessmen that the crisis was two-thirds over. The number of job vacancies on Monster.cz declined by 40 percent over the last 12 months. Miners were given the right to take early retirement. The play Jaromír Jágr, Kladeňák ("Jaromir Jagr, Native Son of Kladno") had its world premiere in Kladno. Tohos, a company located in Svratka, stopped manufacturing hockey sticks because of dismal sales. The Senate approved postponing state-wide leaving exams. A STEM survey revealed that 46 percent of the populace believes that the situation in the Czech Republic is not progressing well and that the country "has no direction." Thirty-one trios turned out for the fourth annual wheel-rolling race, following in the footsteps of wheel-maker Jiří Birka, who, legend has it, trundled from Lednice to Brno in one day but was accused of having a pact with the devil, and thus died in obscurity and poverty 370 years ago. "Polar bears" - those people who inure themselves to cold weather - started the winter swimming season by bathing in the Punkva caves in the Moravský kras (Moravian Karst). Designers decided that next year's spring and summer fashions would be merry.