Last week 33/2006

Rains followed sweltering heat. Q100 floods gushed into the Krkonoše Mountains. “Phantom Floods Return,” the Právo daily notified readers. An Ostrava court gave fugitive billionaire Radovan Krejčíř a suspended sentence for insurance fraud. Media reported that dangerous volcanoes in South America and Asia had stirred to life and terrified the local populace. Nova TV cancelled its political discussion show Sedmička and reintroduced its weekly entertainment show TeleTele. The Ministry of Health found that Orly Bonder nail polish is dangerous. A delegation of Czech athletes left for the European Athletics Championships in Göteborg, Switzerland. Surveys revealed that the Civic Democratic Party would win early elections by a landslide (41 %) and put together a comfortable majority with the Christian Democrats and Greens; in reaction to that, Social Democratic Party Chairman Jiří Paroubek released a statement that summer surveys lie, as his party’s voters are on holiday and their opinions aren’t included in such statistics.

Burčák (stum, i.e. young wine) season began. A commemorative plaque on the birthplace of translator Jan Zábrana was unveiled in Herálec u Humpolce. Bohumila Grögerová celebrated her 85th birthday. Punkrockers from all over the Czech Republic gathered at their festival, Antifest, in Svojšovice. The opening of the Petr Dvorský International Music Festival in Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou was not even jeopardized by an intensive downpour. Czech Airlines announced it would lay off one-fifth of its staff due to ongoing losses. The finance minister began whittling the Paroubek cabinet’s current budget proposal, which presently anticipates a 170-billion-crown deficit even though the Czech Republic promised the European Commission it would keep the deficit below 90 billion crowns. Newscaster Světlana Zárubová left Czech Television to join Prima TV. Graphic designer Michal Cihlář ended his nine-year cooperation with the Prague Zoo. Twenty applicants applied for the position of director of religious affairs at the Ministry of Culture. “When we took the job, the only stipulation was speed – and now it’s been lying in an expensive, air-conditioned warehouse because the state can’t pay; we’ve got about six million crowns tied up in there,” said restorer Zdeněk Fučík, describing the fate of the imperial chair from Schönbrunn, which the Nazis brought to Czechia and local authorities refused to return after the war; now the government decided to return the furniture, but because it had totally deteriorated in Czech custody in the meantime, it had to be repaired first. Ostrava puppeteers flew to South Korea to perform. Five bandits dressed as traffic police held up a security service vehicle on a hairpin bend near Slavkov and made off with 80 million crowns. The Statistical Office calculated this year’s harvest at 10 percent less than last year’s and farmers announced in no time that that this year’s crop failure subsidy should be as high, if not higher, than last year’s subsidy for excessive harvest. There was slight rise in unemployment. An accident in Alaska raised the price of oil to a record 78 dollars per barrel. Media reported on British scientists’ discovery that alcohol and tobacco are much more dangerous and harmful drugs than marijuana. The České Budějovice Regional Court repealed a verdict in favor of the local construction high school, which had barred a student from taking school leaving exams because a teacher had found three grams of Indian cannabis on him in the bathroom; the judges ruled that getting the axe for such a transgression is a totally disproportionate punishment and ordered the school’s administration to let the youth finish his studies. In Cuba and elsewhere around the world, people continued to wait in suspense and hope for the death of one of the world’s last communist dictators, Fidel Castro. A strike in Chilean mines raised the price of copper. František Kaberle brought the Stanley Cup to Czechia. “It was interesting, but I regard the present as an extraordinary period: today, we’re facing a fundamental transformation of the human psyche. Mankind has to change or it won’t survive. We’re actually witnessing the end of human civilization; as we know it now, it will die out, either in a better or worse way,” replied noted psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and holotropic breathing inventor Stanislav Grof to Regenerace monthly’s question: “Some claim the ’60s were the last century’s most interesting era. What’s your take on that period?” The Perseid meteor shower reappeared in the skies. Czech swimmer Yvetta Hlaváčová swam across the English Channel and Czech swimmer David Čech swam across it and back.