Last week 38/2006

Construction of three wind turbines began on the crest of Neklid nad Božím Darem. Czech Airlines reinstated its regular link to Beirut. Despite the razor wire fence enclosing the asylum center in Velké Přílepy, thirty rejected asylum-seekers escaped. A straw warehouse burned down in Vilémovice. The Church introduced a 100-crown entrance fee to St. Vitus Cathedral.

Meteorologists announced that the Indian summer would last till the end of September. Following up on a tip from an anonymous informant, police gave a Prague tram driver a breath test in Modřany and found he had a blood-alcohol level of 3.3. School buses halted due to a strike in the Ústí Region.

Average public expenditures from state funds for one college student dropped to 6800 dollars – that is, to twice as low as the average amount spent for the same thing by OECD states. “If the Czech state can take out an advantageous loan for building a highway then it is absurd for it not to just because it would raise the budget deficit,” Finance Minister Vlastimil Tlustý told Hospodářské noviny, just after he increased the 2007 budget deficit from 80 to 127 billion and announced that for now the Czech Republic was withdrawing from its plan to convert to the euro in 2010 due to the unfeasability of cutting the state’s current level of debt. According to a survey by Median, 38 percent of Czechs welcome Tlustý’s announcement and 29 percent consider it a mistake, while the rest don’t know what to think. Besides inflating the deficit, Minister Tlustý also paid a visit to former premier Miloš Zeman in Vysočina, with whom he – as he said – consulted which reforms the Topolánek government should implement. “The shape of state financing in the future gives rise to greater concern than ever before: for it is indeed an illusion that only our ‘wealthy fellow citizens’ will bear the costs of deficits and mounting social expenditures. No, we will all bear that cost,” the press cited Czech National Bank Vice Governor Luděk Niedermayer, who cautioned against the irresponsible financial policies of Czech governments. The share of funding for culture allocated in the 2007 budget became the lowest since the Velvet Revolution. The Defense Ministry announced that for financial reasons that the Czech Republic “is unlikely” to grant NATO’s request and strengthen the organization’s allied contingent attempting to prevent the return of the radical Taliban in Afghanistan. Five years passed since the terrorist attacks in the USA. The press published a speech in which one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned the West that his organization was preparing a new “widespread catastrophe” for it. Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died. After thirty years of service, legendary pub-keeper Rudolf Kalivoda left the Batelov pub Na mýtě. The Constitutional Court decided labeled President Václav Klaus’ decision to dismiss Iva Brožová as Supreme Court Chairperson this year as “unconstitutional, hence invalid”; “The president is not the superior of judges, and thus can not dismiss them,” wrote the Constitutional Court in the grounds for its verdict. “I see a dangerous shift in our post-revolution status from a parliamentary democracy towards judicial corporatism and towards attaining completely unchecked autonomy,” Klaus declared in reaction to the verdict, adding that he disagrees with the Constitutional Court and that its senate is mistaken. After winning the mixed doubles at the US Open, Marina Navrátilová (49) announced she was ending her tennis career for good. Taťana Le Mogne was named the head of Google’s Czech offshoot. After four months on the job, National Security Council Director Petr Hosek resigned. One hundred and thirty years passed since the moment Viennese Conservatory student Gustav Mahler played two of his compositions for the public in the concert hall of Jihlava’s Dělnický Dům. The second Forest Celebration of Theatre was held in Řevnice. The Czech Republic took part in European Bat Night, a series of events occurring across the continent in September aimed at informing the public about these interesting and endangered creatures and conveying information on research, protection measures, and how they live. The Želevčice-based company Linet sold Fidel Castro 5,000 adjustable beds for 250 million crowns. Prague Zoo’s management announced that another young gorilla would be born to the apes imprisoned in its cages, the first since the two-year old Moje. Odkolek bought a chain of Hungarian bakeries. Šrotozemšťan (Scrapironling), a statue made of old refrigerators, radios, television sets, and vacuum cleaners, was erected in Prague’s Anděl neighborhood. The European Union concluded that eliminating the borders between its “old” and “new” members would be impossible by the planned target of fall of 2007 and postponed the change to an unspecified time in the future.