Last week 43/08

Newspapers reported that Madonna is getting a divorce. After a steep drop, shares on the Czech stock exchange rose by 26 percent, only to continue their free fall the following day. The earth shook in the Cheb region. The leaders of the European Union’s member states met in Brussels for a two-day summit to discuss how to save the European economy and to help the floundering banks here. The Bartered Bride enchanted the Paris opera. The management of the Sušice Solo match works closed all their local factories and the company moved to Asia. In Prague's Monarch Restaurant businessman Bohumil Ďuričko showed police investigators how he shot down another businessman, Václav Kočka, in a drunken altercation recently during a meeting of the friends of Social Democrat Party Chairman Jiří Paroubek. A few days later part of Prague’s Výstaviště, which the family of the slain man had leased from the city, burnt down in an extensive fire. 12:05. And if we only looked at it through the stock market, then somewhere between 12:20 and 12:40, financial advisor Vladimír Fichtner answered in response to a question by Mladá fronta Dnes: “If we were to look at the current crisis through the perspective of “economic time” where 12:00 represents a peak economy, 12:15 a decline, 12:30 a crisis and 12.45 a recovery, where would we find ourselves now?." Ivan Havel celebrated his 70th birthday. The Surya NGO announced that after two years of work its members have completed the construction of a Sun School for the secluded village of Kargyak (alt. 4200 m) in India’s Himalayas and, thanks to the interceding prayers of the Lamas there, managed to safely leave the area and to depart from Zanskar over the snow-covered mountain pass of Shinko La to civilisation. The sorrel Klip broke his leg at the Velká Pardubická and was quickly shot. J.M.G. Le Clézio received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Statistics revealed that heart attacks are on the decline and cancer on the rise. The Municipal Office in Chomutov started filming the customers of streetwalkers and published information that all these people will be called before a Misdemeanour Commission to explain how they behaved towards the girl and how they treated her.

There is no flag from the UN or any other organisation that the Republic is a member of flying at the Castle, presidential spokesman Radim Obchvat explained why Václav Klaus refused to let a European Union flag fly next to the Czech standard at the Prague Castle during the Czech chairmanship of the EU. News agencies informed the public that the leader of the Austrian nationalists, Jörg Haider, lost control of his car at a speed of 140 km/h near Klagenfurt while strongly under the influence, crashed into a concrete pole by the road, perishing almost instantly. The international meeting of intellectuals Forum 2000 ended in Prague. The state hygiene authority came to the conclusion that Czech children eat too much meat and called upon school cafeterias to offer students broccoli instead of schnitzel. Karlovarský Porcelán declared bankruptcy. The government approved the hundred-percent guarantee of bank deposits up to an amount of EUR 50,000. For the second time this year the ground in Prague’s Stromovka Park once again fell into a huge fifteen-metre-deep crater at the site where construction workers are digging a tunnel for the city’s ring road. Radslav Kinský (80) died in his chateau in Žďár nad Sázavou. The Court of Appeal in Olomouc decided that Bolek Polívka is not the Wallachian King. In a ranking of the five hundred best schools in the world, Charles University jumped from the 290th to the 261st place, the first ten spots were traditionally taken by American and English universities. There are certain financial problems here, the budget has been overreached somewhat, but your Prime Minister has given me a very clear guarantee that the state will help if necessary, the President of the International Ski Federation Gian Franco Kasper said in reply to the question from local reporters as to how the financing of the upcoming World Ski Championships in Liberec, which (according to the decision by the Czech organisers) will take place at an altitude where, due to the influence of global warming, there has usually been no snow in recent years; in reaction to Kasper’s words, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek resolutely refused any possibility of government subsidies or guarantees for the championship. RP Capital took over CE Wood. Czech footballers lost to Poland and beat Slovenia in the struggle to advance to the World Cup. Scientific experts quoted on the front pages of the local dailies proved that when building Charles Bridge the masons at the time really did add eggs to the mortar.