Last week 41/2005

An Indian summer set in and meteorologists announced it would last for some time. The State Security Council approved the plan to fight terrorism in 2006–2007. General practitioners held a one-day strike to protest the policies of current Minister of Heaylth Milada Emmerová. In light of the rising price of gas, the Czech populace continues the return to wood and coal. Andrea Bocelli sung in Sazka Arena. In spite of Czech and Austrian efforts to thwart it, the European Union still decided to begin accession talks with Turkey. Yes, it happened, replied Iraqi President Jalal Talabani during a visit to the Czech Republic when asked by the daily Pravo: “Was the overthrow of Saddam worth all those thousands of casualties and losses of life?”

The upper chamber of Parliament proposed a bill banning the promotion of communism and Nazism, punishable by an 8-year sentence, and the Social Democrats announced they would veto the bill in the Chamber of Deputies. The inventor of the electron microscope, Armin Delong was awarded the national prize for outstanding scientist, the Česká hlava (Czech Head). Laurent Goutard became the new head of Komerční banka. A careless driver hit and seriously injured a young girl on a crosswalk in Břeclav. After a three-week search, the police arrested David Lubina, who admitted to shooting dead a young man who had tried to help a woman Lubina was attempting to rob in September of this year. I really don’t care if we reduce or freeze the salaries, but right now we just don’t have time for it, said Deputy Evžen Snítilý (Social Democrats – ČSSD), explaining to the daily MF Dnes why he and his colleagues in Parliament have yet to make good on their promise last December to reduce the salaries they had – in passing the law on firefighters and police officers – ‘accidentally’ raised by seventeen percent. Lenka Dusilová released Mezi světy (Between Worlds). Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda and his wife visited Pope Benedikt XVI at the Vatican. Drivers’ attempts to get out of the way of the reckless, hurtling-at-150km/hour motorcade of Premier Paroubek’s government limousines led to a mass accident on the periphery of Ostrava. They said they aren’t interested in it, they won’t try to find the governmental chauffers, said one person involved in the accident, describing how the police arriving at the scene behaved and handed out 500-crowns fines for ‘failing to maintain prescribed distances between the vehicles’ to all the victims of Paroubek’s aggressive, savage ride. Premier Paroubek decided to wipe the other citizens off the road because he was rushing to visit the Karvin mining company Dolu Dukla, where he was invited by the mining unions to go down a shaft and talk with the miners. The moon eclipsed the sun. Czech Airlines announced that it would report a hundred-million-crown loss this year. Česká spořitelna opened its ATMs to Chinese tourists with China UnionPay cards. Sparta sacked Hřebík. Reinhold Messner came to Karlovy Vary’s TourFilm Festival. FBI agents arrested at his hideout in the Bahamas one of the fathers of the Czech coupon privatization scheme, Viktor Kožený, who faces extensive fraud charges in the Czech Republic, and accused him of money laundering and corruption. First of all, I don’t know anything about that, and secondly, I definitely don’t have the President’s position on it, the head of state’s spokesman Petr Hájek said when asked by the daily Pravo what Václav Klaus, a known admirer of the arrested entrepreneur, thinks about the FBI’s Bahamain raid; in the nineties, Klaus called on Czech society to bring forth “more such Kožený’s” several times, and when the entrepreneur fled the country, he explained his departure as “Czech envy of anyone who tries to accomplish anything and meets with success.” The management of the chain Carrefour sold its domestic department stores to Tesco. Newspapers reported that according to an American team of scientists, humans evolved from primates after apes started eating onions. TV Nova and TV Prima received four-million-crown fines from the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting because the participants in their nationwide hits – the reality shows VyVolení and Big Brother – have sexual intercourse and use obscene language before 10 p.m. Večerníček (the animated character who hosts the children’s show of the same name) celebrated his fortieth birthday. To mark the occasion of World Hospice Day, the civic association Cesta domů held a press conference in a historic tram traveling through Prague with musical accompaniment by Pavel Smetáček’s Traditional Jazz Studio. Czech Paradise was designated a UNESCO geopark.