Last week 35/08

Czechs commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Russian troops' invasion of Czechoslovakia; both Russian dissidents and the Austrian president received thanks - the former for expressing support for the occupied country in 1968 and the latter for the generous help his country provided to emigrating Czechoslovaks. „The Georgian president's, government's and parliament's role in being responsible for provoking the war is undeniable and evidently fatal,“ President Václav Klaus wrote in Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD), for which he earned recognition from Russia, where a book of his will soon be published thanks to sponsorship from a Russian oil company; the Czech government's stance on the conflict is totally the opposite - it has offered 150 million crowns in aid to the destroyed Georgia. The Czech Culture Ministry decided to label films so viewers will know whether to expect sex, violence, drugs or vulgarity in them. The media announced that there would be a huge mushroom harvest. The current government, like the previous one, refused to pay almost 9 billion crowns to Josef Šťáva over the Diag Human affair and plans to appeal the arbiters' verdict. A record amount of investment in road and highway construction was announced for this year; the state will spend almost 90 billion crowns on them. The Czech national football team played for the first time under coach Petr Rada, in a friendly match with England at the legendary Wembley Stadium, which ended in a 2–2 tie. Minister without Portfolio Džamila Stehlíková wants to regulate the TV advertising of alcohol. An MfD source said that Prague's Národní třída metro station would be closed for a year and a half because a man with excellent contacts at City Hall, Sebastian Pawlowski, plans to build a shopping center there. „She has my full confidence,“ said Mirek Topolánek, referring to supreme state prosecutor Renata Vesecká after a Cabinet meeting where the annual report on the prosecutor's office was discussed. Pec pod Sněžkou city hall received a permit to build a new chair lift on the Sněžka mountain. Parliament's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, delayed for the fourth time the date on which a law introducing rules regulating state administration is to go into effect (this time until 2012); the law was first passed in 2002. Employees of Siemens' Prague factory went on strike for two hours because they disagree with the shareholders' decision to close down the plant because of high costs and move operations to the east. The right-wing Cabinet decided to attract foreign workers to the Czech Republic, while the left-wing Social Democratic party warned that it would bring tuberculosis and AIDS to the country. Distraint was levied against the Agriculture Ministry because it was in default of a payment it had been ordered to pay by the court.

„I was thinking about August 1968,“ said javelin thrower Barbora Špotáková after she won a gold medal at the Olympics on August 21st. The Hradec Králové regional court handed down sentences ranging from two years to nine years to former managers of the Trend funds. It was announced that the legendary Blue Mauritius stamp would visit Bohemia. The television stations Prima and Nova decided not to continue boycotting digitalization and made their analogue frequencies available. The fishing and hydro-biological research institute released a study showing that the Vltava river is less polluted in the capital than some mountain streams are because small communities do not have adequate water treatment systems like larger cities do, and also because chemical substances are more diluted in the lower sections. Gold panning took place in Zlaté Hory. The Cabinet ended its „milk to schools“ program, which had been launched by Miloš Zeman's Cabinet when there was an oversupply of milk. „Unit of stupidity = 1 Kocáb,“ wrote Social Democrats Chairman Jiří Paroubek, on his blog, of Michael Kocáb's candidacy to the Senate for Prague 1, rapidly increasing Kocáb's chances of winning. A memorial service for Studénka train crash victims was held at the town's Svatý Bartoloměj church in Studénka. The iPhone went on sale in the Czech Republic.