Last week 42/08

The newspapers reported that, during its space odyssey, the US space probe Messenger had passed within just 200 kilometers of Mercury's surface. The number of cases of hepatitis rose. Pharmacists warned that the returning Indian summer would be good for ticks. „The goal is to pay respect to those high-minded animals,“ said Ivan Vystrčil, the president of the Central European Napoleonic Society, explaining why his organization intends to erect a memorial to horses killed at the battle of Austerlitz. Well-known anti-marijuana activist Jiří Komorous was dismissed from the national anti-drug squad. During a scuffle that broke out at the Monarch restaurant at the release party for Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) Chairman Jiří Paroubek's new book, Evropa a svět očima sociálního demokrat („Europe and the World Through the Eyes of a Social Democrat“), one of the chairman's friends shot another of his friends dead. Slavia beat Sparta 4–1. NATO's supreme commander, General James Craddock, asked the alliance's political leaders to start drafting a plan that would address a scenario in which Russia attacked any of NATO's Baltic or Eastern European members. Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-French linguist and psychoanalyst, became the 10th recipient of the Vize 97 (Vision 97) award handed out each year by the association of the same name founded by Dagmar and Václav Havel. „We did not want to provoke them into causing even more trouble,“ a police spokesperson said, explaining why the Czech police stood by and watched while hundreds of Croatian football fans - provoked by Czech fans' unfurling of a banner showing support for Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadžić - rampaged through Prague, vandalizing property, giving Hitler salutes, attacking passers-by and beating a tourist so severely that he fell into a coma. Bonton bought Supraphon. The NHL season began in Prague. Even the $700-billion-plan approved by the US government to rescue collapsing financial institutions wasn't enough to quell panic on global financial markets. The Prague Stock Exchange dropped by a record amount - just under nine percentage points. Together with other countries, the Czech Republic decided to increase the guarantee for insured deposits from 90 to 100 percent for bank deposits of up to 1.25 million crowns. News agencies reported on the Icelandic government's declaration of the country’s impending „national bankruptcy“ and its request to Russia for a bridge loan of four billion euros to help its ailing banking system.

„Because the operated-on man had no relative who could take care of him, he was taken to a long-term care facility where he succumbed to his injuries,“ Prague police spokesperson Tomáš Hulan told the media, describing the fate of a 77-year-old-man who asked a young man traveling on the Prague subway system with a baby carriage to give up the seat designated for invalids to his disabled son; the young father who was asked to move did not give the seat up, and, on the contrary, verbally and physically abused the pair; when the father and son then exited the station in Letňany, the aggressor followed them and kicked the older man to death; the police have been searching for the perpetrator in vain ever since. The number of blood donors fell. The energy giant ČEZ won a selection process to acquire the Albanian distribution company Operatori i Sistemit te Shperndarjes. The government's equal-opportunities commission proposed that the third Sunday in June be declared Father's Day. Sixty tons of molten glass escaped from the Heřmanova Huť glassworks in the Plzeň region. On the occasion of the nationwide opening of the academic year, Prime Minister Topolánek announced at Masarykova univerzita (Masaryk University) in Brno that tuition fees would not be introduced during his government's term in office. An unknown perpetrator attacked TV Prima's news director Jan Tuna in the center of Prague, punching him in the face and breaking his nose while shouting, „Národní odpor!“ („National Resistance!“) „Perhaps his behavior was not exactly proper, but not every bad action is a necessarily a criminal offense,“ argued the defense lawyer for driver Ladislav Šafařík, whom a Brno court slapped with a 20,000-crown fine for hitting and seriously injuring a cyclist and then, instead of helping the injured man, walking around his car only to check to see if the paint had been damaged. The number of people supporting the construction of the US radar base in the Brdy hills rose from 24 to 38 percent; the number of opponents dropped from 70 to 55 percent. The media reported that British scientists had learned that religious faith can reduce pain.