Last week 43/2007
With sun and vibrant fall colors, Indian Summer arrived. The threat of Turkey invading northern Iraq caused the price of oil on world markets to rise. Sales of film DVDs skyrocketed. Newspapers cited U.S. President George Bush, who warned the international community that it should do everything in its power to prevent the extremists governing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
With sun and vibrant fall colors, Indian Summer arrived. The threat of Turkey invading northern Iraq caused the price of oil on world markets to rise. Sales of film DVDs skyrocketed. Newspapers cited U.S. President George Bush, who warned the international community that it should do everything in its power to prevent the extremists governing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. The government decided to return property stolen long ago to the Catholic Church. A memorial to American fighter pilot William Kiggis – the only western soldier to die during the liberation of Brno – was unveiled in Brno, where the remains of his plane were recently unearthed – 63 years after being shot down – during excavation work. Racehorse Cieszymir had to be put down after suffering injury on the Taxis ditch at this year’s Velka Pardubice Steeplechase. The Constitutional Court ruled that wiretapping used by the police and secret service in 2004 in order to find “something” on local aristocrats demanding their stolen property back from the state was unlawful, and that the blame falls not only on the police but also on the court that permitted their spying; Martina Kasíková, the chairman of the Prague-East court, which approved the use of wiretapping, refused to comment on the matter. “No offense, but I’m not commenting on that,” replied Ústí nad Labem Court judge František Mašata when asked by Hospodářské noviny whether he shouldn’t re-evaluate his twenty-year-old verdict sentencing a person to two years in prison for publicly expressing discontent with the communist dictatorship while at work. Kühn’s Children’s Choir won the children’s category of the “Let the Peoples Sing” international contest in Wuppertal, Germany. The Czech Republic lost the contest for the U.N. Security Council non-permanent member seat to Croatia. Jiří Holický, who was recently appointed director of the state-owned forestry company Lesy Česky republiky, resigned from his post for “personal reasons”; upon taking the job, Holický had declared that he would like to stop the misappropriation of state property by powerful timber-felling lobbying groups recruiting from Slušovice or the asset-stripping demimonde of the first part of the 1990s.
“It’s an outright scandal,” said Tomáš Brzobohatý, representative of the PPF financial group, commenting on the fact that his boss, billionaire Petr Kellner, was steamrolled during his attempt to set himself up in Russia by the even more popular and bigger billionaire Oleg Deripaska. During excavation work near Mašovice, archeologists found pieces of a 7,000-year-old sculpture of a woman. The Chamber of Deputies prematurely ended its debate on the 2008 budget so some of its members could catch their flight to Munich for the Czech vs. Germany football match. Zdeněk Urbánek celebrated his 90th birthday. “Why him? His questioning of the fundamental building blocks of today’s civilization isn’t doing much for peace,” said Czech President Václav Klaus, commenting on the Swedish academic committee’s decision to bestow this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Al Gore, biologist and former U.S. vice president, who has been persuading the world’s politicians and business elite of the need to change the current human destruction of nature, which is largely responsible for global climate change. Stifling toxic smoke engulfed a burning plastic warehouse in Řepov near Mladé Boleslav. The influx of foreign investments weakened. The U.S. Army decided to lend Czech units serving in Afghanistan 20 of its legendary Humvee armored vehicles. The Czech Republic became the first to join the United Kingdom when it announced it too would boycott the upcoming EU-Africa summit if Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe were to attend. Milan Kundera became the winner of the Czech national literary prize. After 57 years, Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, 86 – the last living prosecutor who requested and was granted the death penalty for democratic politician and communist opponent Milada Horáková in a trumped-up trial following the communist putsch – went on trial.
“I guess she not only likes me, but also the party,” said Social Democratic Party chairman Jiří Paroubek in an interview “about his ex-wife, new partner, divorce, wedding, taste, entertainment, and losing weight” for Magazín MF Dnes, explaining why his former lover and soon-to-be wife works for free when she goes abroad to interpret for Social Democratic politicians. Snow fell briefly in Horská Kvilda.
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