Last week 50/2006

Police arrested a young man who confessed to murdering eight patients within a few months by injecting them with a blood-thinning drug while working as a nurse in the hospital in Havlíčkův Brod. “The hospital’s criminal complaint was drafted very vaguely, so our processor didn’t find it crucial to take immediate steps in this case – and then he fell ill for three weeks, until the end of November,” said East Bohemian Police Chief Petr Přibyl, explaining why it took his unit two months from the hospital’s warning to take the suspect into custody; in the meantime, the serial killer was discharged from the hospital and found a new job in Jihlava’s hospital. Advent began.

Daisies bloomed in the park in front of the main train station in Prague. Two thousand years passed since the Romans attempted to march with their legions into the territory of today’s Czech Republic. K’Naan rapped in Prague. The Changhong Europe factory in Nymburk started producing plasma TVs. After a six-year break and in protest against the habitual breakdowns of the “approved” Temelín Nuclear Power Plant, the Austrian Movement for Nuclear Safety held another blockade on the Czech-Austrian border crossing in Dolní Dvořiště. Ferdinand Habsburg’s great grand-daughter, Princess Sophie von Hohenberg, filed a lawsuit in Czech court to reclaim Konopiště Castle. Deputy Miloš Melčák announced he had enough “pressure and bullying” and left the Social Democrat’s parliamentary group. Hypoteční banka began offering forty-year mortgages. European climatologists released a report saying that the Alps are experiencing their warmest period in the last 1,300 years and that winter tourism “awaits major problems.” “We’re skeptical about such studies. If we believed them, we couldn’t invest 104 million crowns in further development, as we just did,” Luboš Krejza, director of the new ski Eldorado, Skiareál Lipno, was cited in the media commenting on the scientific report. Space probes detected water on Mars. The Prague stock exchange skyrocketed to a historical record, with the PX index reaching 1586. Just 38 percent of Litvínov residents participated in a referendum on whether or not to let their town be swallowed up by a Mostecká úhelna coal mine; because of low voter turnout, the outcome of the referendum – no – is not valid. The government received parliament’s support for its plan to send Czech soldiers to U.N. peace missions in Lebanon. The Interior Ministry dismissed eight former StB members who, for all seventeen post-Revolution years, had administered StB archives containing files that have never been declassified. A Gallup Institute poll conducted an international corruption survey and the results indicated that bribery is most common in the Czech Republic of all the EU member states; in the survey, Czech corruption surpassed that in Pakistan and India. “The selection commission was on vacation in Japan until the end of the month and it seemed hopeless. But then we managed to convince the health minister there that our products are better – which is how we succeeded,” Linet director Zbyněk Frolík told Hospodářské noviny how his company outfoxed its Japanese competition, Paramount Bed, and won a contract for 25,000 hospital beds for Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela through Castro’s Cuba. After evaluating this year’s figures, statisticians came to the conclusion that Czechs and their children are increasingly fond of alcohol. The French won a reprise of the famed Battle at Slavkov, just as they did in 1805. Vaccinations against cervical cancer began. The European Commission announced that the Czech Republic’s chances of adopting the common European currency is fading into oblivion due to huge budget deficits, and a STEM agency poll found that Czech citizens don’t care: a full two-third believes that life without the common European currency will “not have an unfavorable impact on the Czech economy.” “It’s a historical decision – freedom of movement in the Union applies to everyone,” said Interior Minister Ivan Langer, commenting on the Brussels agreement on new member states EU joining the Schengen zone, which would enable their citizens to cross European borders wherever and entirely freely without passports or national IDs as of the new year. A homeless man suddenly dropped dead in front of a court building in the center of Brno. As always at this time of year, St. Nicholas and his entourage of angels and devils passed through the country. The alliance of water management companies informed consumers that the price of water would increase as of January 1, and newspapers reported that Christmas mistletoe brings prophetic dreams.