Last week 17/2006

Famous pilot and WWII hero František Peřina (95) was hospitalized at the Central Military Hospital due to health problems. Political parties received their numbers for the upcoming election. The price of oil climbed to a record 73 dollars per barrel and gas to 32 crowns per liter. “Besides soldiers, the European security system should be comprised of policemen, firemen, and rescue workers,” declared Green Party security expert and election leader Stanislav Penc, explaining what his party meant by its proposal that Europe’s security should be guaranteed in the future not by NATO, but by “European security forces.” Kája Saudek suffered a severe heart attack.

A joint vote of the Social Democrats and Communists pushed the Labor Code through the Chamber of Deputies. The price of airline tickets jumped. Statisticians announced that, based the number of applications filed, asylum-seekers’ interest in seeking assistance or refuge in the Czech Republic is steadily declining. Dozens of Czech personalities including former president Václav Havel, ex-ambassador to Russia Luboš Dobrovský, and Senator Jaromír Štětina signed an open letter in defense of Russian political prisoner Mikhail Khordokovsky, who was stabbed in the face and injured by a fellow prisoner in a labor camp in the Far East, an event which brought to light that authorities are severely harassing the inconvenient Khordokovsky, far from the eyes of the public and the media. “Yes,” responded 48 percent of Czechs when asked by the polling agency ScandC: “Should the Communists have a share of power?”; the rest said no. The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in Olomouc’s Sigmia Hotel. Rudolf Slánský died. Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her eightieth birthday. The management of Hyundai automaker sent word to the Czech Republic that there would apparently be a delay in the construction of a new assembly plant for which the firm has already acquired plots of land in the Beskyd Mountains which had been strong-armed from their original owners by Moravia-Silesia regional authorities; Hyundai’s problem stems from the fact that its managers have been charged with extensive corruption charges at home and most have been arrested by the police; the rest are under house arrest and can’t travel anywhere. The caps of the first mushrooms have popped out in the woods. “It was just a big hoohah for abroad,” remarked Čeněk Růžička, chairman of the Committee for Compensation of the Victims of the Roma Holocaust, following the government’s announcement that, at the request of Culture Minister and South Bohemian election leader Vítězslav Jandák, it was abandoning its long and loudly proclaimed effort to buy the pig farm now standing on the premises of a Roma concentration camp in Lety u Písku. The Ministry of Social Affairs found that there are 330 Roma ghettos in the Czech Republic and the number continues to grow. Mirka Čejková announced in the papers that after years of marriages, divorces, and turbulence, she would return to TV. Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda proposed a law which – in an effort to make the streets safer and increase police visibility – commands police officers to wear their uniforms even while off-duty “everywhere besides at swimming pools.” Deputy Chief of the Central Bohemian Police Force Petr Hostek was named head of the National Security Office. “Because the violation occurred while driving down a hill in a safe place, I tried to hedge – I told him that I could spend a week-long vacation in Croatia for that amount; but he showed me the fines for traffic violations with a smile and the observation that if I had been driving twenty kilometers over the speed limit, I’d have had to pay the cost of a Caribbean holiday,” columnist and translator Jaroslav Veis wrote in Hospodárské noviny, describing what happened when he drove ten kilometers per hour over the speed limit during a recent trip in Norway and a police officer slapped him with an eight-thousand-crown fine. Due to an increase in counterfeit bills, chain stores introduced a ban on accepting bank notes over 50 euros. Five European buyers expressed interest in eBanka. Brno City Hall decided to expel cars from the metropolis’ historical center and stringently regulate traffic in the city’s pedestrian zone. After the recent deportation of a Czech diplomat from Havana, Cuban Embassy Attache Manuel Angel Baltar Charnicharo had to leave Prague prematurely, thereby reducing the number of Cuban diplomats in the Czech Republic to two. V for Vendetta hit the cinemas. Scientists published research showing that wealthy women increasingly want only handsome men. Stem/Mark agency reported that, according to its polls, foreign tourists consider Prague the second-most attractive destination in Europe – just after Paris.