Last week 33/2007

Moldy hot dogs were sold at Makro in Hradec Kralové. A 51-year-old allergic man died after being stung by a bee in the Beroun Region. Apricot distillation season began.

Observing a cluster of galaxies called CL0958+4702 some five billion light years from Earth through the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers spotted an area in which four massive galaxies comprised of hundreds of billions of stars are colliding. “I would compare it to four huge sand trucks crashing into each other, flinging the grains of sand in all directions,” Kenneth Rines of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told reporters, also reminding the media that, thanks to the Spitzer cosmic telescope, scientists had discovered in the middle of the Milky Way a nebula whose shape is reminiscent of the mother of life and intelligence – the double-helix DNA molecule.

Komerční banka’s rising share prices kept the Prague Stock Exchange from tumbling. Sixty-two years passed since atom bombs exploded over Hiroshima. The Remoska celebrated its 50th birthday. Police charged two artists from the Ztohoven group with scaremongering for broadcast-hacking and mounting fake images of an atom bomb exploding over the Krkonoš Mountains during a live broadcast from the mountain range on the Czech Television’s morning show Panorama. A power outage prevented Česká spořitelna clients from accessing their money via ATMs. The U.S. House of Representatives approved financing for constructing a radar base in the Czech Republic. Plaintiff Arif Salichov halted his corruption lawsuit against Vice Premier Jiří Čunek.

“Our embassy told me that it was too great a risk – they say those people want to stay at all costs, even by means of faked matrimony; recently, just half of a two-member delegation reportedly returned home,” said Písek Folk Festival director Pavel Brůžek, explaining why the renowned Nigerian ensemble Hasog Performing Arts Group, whose members were not granted entrance visas for the Czech Republic, would not perform at the festival. Non-alcoholic beer was given away at the Humpolec Beer Celebrations. Debris from a demolished kiln buried a worker at the lime works in Tmaň.

A young woman burned to death in Ostrov u Bezdružic when she returned to her burning home to retrieve her kitten. Media reported on a massive demonstration in Delhi, India where thousands of Tibetans exiled from their homeland by China’s Red Army protested against the upcoming Olympic Games, which should be held in Peking next year according to the International Olympic Committee’s decision. The state prosecutor asked the Chamber of Deputies to hand over Communist deputy Josef Vondruška, who is accused of torturing political prisoners when he was a warden at one of the communist era’s worst prisons, Minkovic near Liberec.

“The term ‘mistress’ is generally perceived as a label for a person whose standing in a partnership is neither full nor honorable, in fact, it can even be perceived as derogatory,” JUDr Tomáš Sokol, who was hired by former Premier Jiří Paroubek to explain to the tabloids that they should not use the “dishonoring word mistress” to refer to Paroubek’s current girlfriend, Petra Kováčová, in headlines, wrote in a letter to the editor of Blesk; polled and subsequently widely cited linguists called Sokol’s argumentation utter nonsense, adding that “linguistically, the word has no hint of derogatoriness, but simply denotes a lovable, loved creature.” Chemical magnate Andrej Babiš took over the Kostelec slaughterhouse. The traditional summer gold panning event was held on the Otava River near Kestřan. Due to the rising number of overworked Czechs, local banks decided to introduce evening business hours.

Former Frýdek-Místek traffic police chief Michael Čaš was given two years’ probation and his driving license revoked for four years for driving and crashing while extremely inebriated. Less expensive drugs reduced Zentiva’s profits. Before leaving on holiday, Czech President Václav Klaus bought a house in Libeň for 8.5 million crowns and announced that he intends to fly to New York at the end of the summer to stun the United Nations. “The only ones convening there are the Gore types, so they’ll be shocked by my fervid speech,” President Klaus, who is invited to present his view on global warming to interested delegates before the U.N. General Assembly convenes in September, told the Právo daily. Helena Štáchová was confirmed as the exclusive owner of the marionette characters Spejbl and Hurvínek. Gliders raced above Vysoké Mýto.