Last week 6/2007

Following warnings from meteorologists, strong winds returned. Statisticians announced that this January was the warmest January in the last half century. Miloš Forman brought Goya's Ghosts to Prague. Windows Vista invaded computers.

„The police are leaning on us – reportedly either the trees disappear or they'll reduce the speed limits,“ said Czech Roads and Highways Directorate employee Marie Tesařová, explaining why her organization launched a massive program aimed at felling all the trees lining Czech roads.

Under the slogan of Shadow Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek (Social Democratic Party) –„there's no kind radar, no evil missile“ – hundreds of citizens demonstrated across the country against the US government's appeal to the Czech Republic to allow the building of a military base housing a radar for identifying missiles fired against the USA, the West, or Israel, by countries such as Iran or North Korea. The Polish chemical manufacturer Dwory acquired Kaučuk Kralupy. Reformed heroin smuggler Radek Hanykovics died of lung cancer in Hradec Králové.

The last of the valuable print matter that was destroyed in the 2002 floods was returned to the Municipal Library in Prague. New Airbus aircraft for the government fleet valued at 3 billion crowns landed in Kbely. Noted Czech pop veteran Karel Svoboda shot himself in the garden of his villa in Jevany, because of debts accrued by his music business and general loneliness. „If that was Karel's wish, we have to respect it,“ popular singer Lucie Bílá said of his demise. Sklárny Bohemia glassworks commenced massive lay-offs.

The Municipal Court in Prague ruled that Count František Oldřich Kinský was a Czech citizen; the justices thereby overruled the Interior Ministry's earlier verdict, from 2004, that Kinský was not a Czech citizen, thereby striking down a previous ruling of the Prague 1 District Office, whose clerk decided in 2001 that Kinský was Czech; because of this, the clerk was accused of attempted treason because Kinský is seeking through restitution disputes the return of extensive family property that was pilfered by the state years ago.

Adverse weather conditions delayed the launch of the new Czech polar station in Antarctica. The largest solar power plant in eastern Europe was built in Bušanovice. A decision was taken to rebuild the bus station in Tábor. The conservationist center in Vlašim held a bird-feeder-building course.

„I don't feel guilty, but I admit that I behaved unprofessionally – more like the father of a beaten-up son than a police officer,“ Brno police officer Pavel Trenz said in court in reaction to the two-year prison sentence the regional court gave him for abducting an underage Rom, driving him to the woods, and – through beatings, death threats, and gunshots over his head – forcing him to confess that he and some other boys had beaten up Trenz's son the day before; after more than an hour the boy managed to escape and was later found to be innocent; despite that, the court of first instance suspended Trenz's sentence.

A sauerkraut-tasting took place in Pohořelice na Břeclavsku. Newspapers reported that Jane Fonda has already forgotten about the boat people and is once again protesting in front of the White House – this time against the war in Iraq. A seriously ill homeless man died without treatment in front of the Olomouc Faculty Hospital. Postage for letters sent to European countries went up.

„The Czechs and Poles are pushing their Euro-skepticism to such an extreme that they are deeply alienating themselves from the rest of the European Union; the biggest misunderstanding in Eastern Europe lies in its conception of the EU as a static place where all they have to do is enter and that's it – throughout its history the EU has always been in a state of constant change and that process will continue,“ wrote Hospodářské noviny, citing the reaction of the Financial Times associate editor Wolfgang Münchau to the efforts of President Václav Klaus and Foreign Minister Alexandr Vondra to isolate the Czech Republic within the European Union.

It came to light that, following altercations or scuffles in their flocks, crows, like humans, seek comfort in tender caresses from those closest to them. An unknown perpetrator vandalized the Calvary on Charles Bridge in Prague by breaking off part of the inscription „Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts“ on the Jesus of Nazareth statue.

Scientists from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned the world that mankind has just 10 years to reverse the already unmanageable signs of global warming. Travel agencies announced that the price of summer vacations would rise in a few days and urged people to buy now.