Last week 50/08

The ski season started. The Dalai Lama visited Prague, where he lectured on the best path to happiness at the Prague Congress Center (Kongresové centrum Praha). Czechs stopped spending. The UN's annual symposium on global warming was held in Poznań with Czech delegates in attendance. After three years of service in Kabul, the Czech field hospital pulled out. The media reported that the battle with the assassins who occupied two Mumbai hotels and murdered people at a local train station had ended after three days, resulting in 174 dead and several hundred wounded victims. Miss Czech Republic 2004 Jana Doleželová ended her run on StarDance. „We're looking into the culpability of everyone who had any connection with the affair, including Czechs,“ David Jones, spokesperson for the UK's Serious Fraud Office, told Hospodářské noviny after a Swiss court gave his office permission to investigate a number of Swiss bank accounts via which money flowed from the arms manufacturers SAAB/BAE Systems into the Czech Republic and elsewhere for lobbyists and parties involved in the multi-billion-crown Gripen fighter deal. „When that investigation is opened, there's going to be a bunch of people with chills running down their spines,“ wrote the daily, citing words that slipped out of former Foreign Minister Jan Kavan's mouth as he was being filmed by a Swiss television station's hidden camera last year; Kavan was also involved in the deal at one point. The Czech trade inspectorate (Česká obchodní inspekce) once again banned the sale of burčák (young wine) until next spring. Prague's southern bypass was blocked by barrels of paint that had fallen off a wrecked truck. Vlastimil Tlustý was sighted and photographed during a secret visit to the Prague Castle. „Our position has not changed one bit - nothing crucial has happened that would cause us to re-evaluate our negative stance toward the radar,“ said Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) chairman Jiří Paroubek, commenting on the foreign ministers of NATO member states having called the planned US radar base in the Brdy hills „a great asset to the defense of Europe and Western civilization“ during their meeting in Brussels. Roughly 50 participants in a holy mass in the St. Wenceslas chapel (Kaple Svatováclavská) in Prague's St. Vitus's cathedral (Katedrála sv. Víta) commemorated the 630th anniversary of the death of the King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Karel IV. A big, new solar power plant began operating in Vojkovice near Brno. New Central Bohemian Region (Středočeský kraj) Commissioner David Rath (ČSSD) fired the directors of all regional hospitals. Members of parliament „sliced up the bear,“ i.e., sent money to the regions that elected them. Because of the unmanageable number of interested parties, junkyards rescinded their offer to liquidate cars manufactured before 1991 in an environmentally friendly manner for free. Jindřich Štyrský's painting Chrpy (Květy ve sněhu) („Cornflowers (Blossoms in the Snow)“) was auctioned for six million crowns.

„I've got to decide: either I'll stay here and continue to try to fulfill my music dream, or I'll return to the comfort of home, where I'll get back into my old routine and pick up where I left off; it will be a difficult choice,“ Slovak singer Jana Kirschner told the newspaper Právo, confiding how she's working out whether she should continue to try her luck in London or whether she should pack up and return to Bratislava, to guaranteed certainty and Slovak fame. For the first time new recruits to Prague's fire department pledged their preparedness to help people in trouble, at a ceremony in Prague's Národní museum (National Museum) building. In light of the advancing financial crisis, the government proposed widespread tax and insurance cuts. The blockade of international airports in Thailand ended in victory for the demonstrators who demanded the prime minister's resignation, enabling 100,000 tourists, including 500 Czechs, to fly back home after an eight-day wait. The media reported on an experiment by Swedish scientists who were researching why man can sense his own „I“ in his body and what it feels like to shake hands with oneself or to feel oneself being stabbed in the stomach with a kitchen knife, through glasses that depict virtual reality. Canadian Governor-General Michaëlle Jean ended her official visit to the Czech Republic a day early because of the tense political situation back home. Wage growth slowed. A blast furnace in the Dolní oblast Vítkovic area, also known as Ostravské Hradčany, was added to the European Cultural Heritage List. Student Zuzana Smrčková, 19, set a new Czech record in hot-air-balloon flying: she covered 60 kilometers with a tank meant to last an hour and managed to stay airborne for almost four hours. Food and drink prices dropped at Prague's Ruzyně airport. Meteorologists forecast that Christmas would be muddy.