Last week 25/2007

A weakening crown raised the cost of holidays abroad. The first Czech tourist drowned in Croatia. Thousands of people commemorated the passing of 65 years since the obliteration of the village of Lidice. Gabriel Eichler bought the consumer electronics manufacturer ETA. His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa came to the Czech Republic on his Diamond Way. Bohemians gloriously fought their way back to Czech football's top division. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek introduced his budget proposal for next year, and a battle over cutting his cuts ensued behind the scenes.

„If this remained here permanently, it wouldn't bother me at all,“ remarked the majority of polled Brno residents in reference to the existence of 60 deckchairs placed around Brno's Freedom Square by art faculty student Alena Kazatelová as part of her project, „Have a Rest!“; the people who obeyed her command and kicked back for a while were brought rolls and coffee by students from the same school; the deck chairs stood in the center of Brno for one day and one night, after which the repose ended with a set of calisthenics. Tax Freedom Day arrived in the Czech Republic. Meteorologists informed citizens that the current scorching heat would last another month. „I feel like I'm 20,“ weathercaster Romana Vítová told the media on the day she turned 30. A group of American scientists warned the world against the impending expansion of Alzheimer's disease. Drought swept across the republic. For reasons unknown, an unknown perpetrator intentionally set fire to the car of Pardubice Mayor Jaroslav Deml (Civic Democrats – ODS). Laurie Anderson performed in Prague. The Czech Republic, together with the Netherlands, Britain, Poland, Ireland, and Sweden, sharply protested a plan by Spain, Italy, and France to cancel the European Union-imposed sanctions on the totalitarian regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who – it seems to the delight of all good-hearted people – actually did not die of his recent serious illness, and, on the contrary, recovered and returned to power, which the Moravian band Elektrick Mann celebrated in its song, „Fidel Castro smokes Havana cigars, but not marijuana“ (Fidel Castro hulí Havanu, ale ne marihuanu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y-SWtNQqMA). „There is obviously at the moment a fundamental misunderstanding between the West and Russia. We have to try and get to the bottom of it and resolve it, otherwise what will happen over time is that instead of maximizing the business people want to do with Russia, they are going to minimize it,“ British Prime Minister Tony Blair pronounced in an interview for Der Spiegel following the G8 Summit in Heiligendam, where Russian President Vladimir Putin again attacked the American plan to build parts of an anti-terrorist shield to protect the West in the Czech Republic and Poland. The mdia reported that European fast trains have started competing with airplanes. Podyjí national park's management opened a new nature trail that cuts through the Dyje canyon. The government approved a national program for reducing emissions. Baby Stan was found in Olomouc's baby hatch. At the Interior Ministry's recommendation, the foreign police did not prolong the visas of 200 North Korean women who had hitherto been earning hard currency here for North Korea's Stalinist-like regime as slave laborers with the Czech authorities' consent. Two young copper tube-thieves drowned in the Odra river on the outskirts of Ostrava as they were fleeing from the police. „We are attacked systematically, and there are so many incidences that we don't even report every one,“ an unnamed shop-owner in the center of Přerov told Mladá fronta Dnes, where – according to the newspaper – a gang of robbers systematically and in broad daylight burglarizes boutiques on the city's main boulevard, and the authorities have no idea how to deal with their rampaging. Singer Anna K. brought the audience to their feet in Želiv. A memorial honoring all the victims of Communism was erected in Washington, D.C. at a ceremony attended by Czech guests. Polls conducted by the market research agency Median showed that if premature elections were held in the Czech Republic today, they would be won by the Civic Democrats (36 %), followed by the Social Democrats (31 %) and the Communists (15 %). The Czech company Genomac studied the DNA of five thousand Czechs and discovered that they are only half Slavic – the other half of the local populace, according to Genomac, has German, Jewish, or Finno-Ugrian ancestry. „Plato says that ‚every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors‘ – a long sequence of changes has interfused everything, and nothing that was before us is ours: people must be distinguished from each other not on the basis of where they have come from, but where they are headed,“ said a Genomac official, annotating his company's information with a quote from Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca. On the basis of Genomac's genetic discoveries, the Prague Castle Administration asked scientists from the Natural Sciences Faculty of Charles University if it would be possible to determine whether the Přemyslids were or were not genuine Czechs through DNA analysis of their preserved bones. In a media poll, one-fourth of the respondents were in favor of allowing slapping in Czech schools.