Last week 30/08

Two hundred and nineteen years passed since the Bastille was stormed. The Czech Republic worked its way up to third place on the list of Europe's largest electricity exporters. Bronislaw Geremek passed away. After the signing of the Czech-American treaty on building a radar base in Brdy, Russia adjusted the tap on its oil pipeline and reduced supplies to the Czech Republic first to one-half and then to one-tenth of the agreed daily amount. „We re-routed the Czech oil supplies to Turkey because there are better profit margins,“ said Nurislam Subayev, deputy director of the Russian oil company Tatneft, explaining the sudden breach of contractual commitments. The USA announced that it would make its ships operating in the Mediterranean available for the Czech Republic's defense. The media warned Czech tourists heading to the Adriatic that Hungary had quietly introduced a toll on a stretch of road leading to the Adriatic that had been toll-free to date, and that local police officers were collecting high fines from foreigners caught unawares. In Řehlovice, the 10th annual Czech-German Proudění/Strömungen art symposium began. Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday. „When I would be driving to Ostrava at 5am to train in various gyms and see people coming back from a night of partying, I'd say to myself: ‚Jesus, they've got it made.‘ I'm not saying that I want to party, but I would like to go out every once in a while,“ replied popular fitness guru and power yoga course organizer Václav Krejčík to Pátek magazine's question: „For example, today you are exercising until 8:30. Don't you miss having free evenings?“ A strong earthquake startled Czech tourists on the island of Rhodes. The independent cultural-social group Radios announced that the l'Arrache-coeur trio would play a concert in Peníkov near Český Rudolec on July 24th, 2008. „Distributing the uniforms is a logistically demanding task in and of itself. And to add to that some discussion groups? That's impossible,“ said an anonymous member of the Czech Olympic committee, explaining to Lidové noviny why his institution banned Amnesty International activists from speaking with Czech Olympic athletes about human-rights violations in China while the committee was distributing uniforms at O2 Arena in Prague. Magdalena Kožená became a mother for the second time. The Czech Savo brand stormed the Hungarian market. A Eurobarometer survey revealed that Czechs trust EU institutions (59 percent) more than their own government and parliament (33 and 19 percent respectively). A Zagreb court imposed a 12,500-crown fine on a Czech tourist who smacked his two young, restless children and made them kneel down and put their heads against a pump at a filling station in Zagreb; horror-stricken Croatian witnesses called the police who arrested the man and charged him with child abuse.

„I'm going to say something that some people will hate me for: poor care of the elderly is primarily a failure of families because they are above all responsible for their forebears,“ remarked Social Affairs Minister Petr Nečas in connection with a finding by Mladá fronta Dnes reporters who got jobs in a hospice that the elderly are treated in a rough and undignified manner; following the finding, Nečas proposed that the children of the patients in the hospice pay extra for their parents' care and thereby enable a higher level of care. A locomotive caught fire while traveling on the Plzeň-Cheb line. A masked robber held up a bar in Uničov. Czech National Bank experts came to the conclusion that the current high rate of inflation would begin to drop considerably in October. „It is a combination of pudding served with caramelized crickets, wafers with mealy worms and a chocolate-praline filled cricket,“ said chef Petr Ocknecht, describing to Lidové noviny his new dessert, Chichen Itza, which, according to him, has became a hit among the „top 10,000 upper-class“ Czechs. An unknown perpetrator poured phosphoric acid into the fountain on Náměstí Svobody square in Brno. Pavel Machonin passed away. Ute Lemper sang chansons in Prague. The European Commission called on mobile operators to cut their overpriced rates for text messages in Europe to one-third. Exploration beneath the city of Jihlava detected a second medieval passageway whose walls give off a mysterious greenish light. Verdi's opera La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) was performed on the revolving stage in Český Krumlov.