Last week 47/2005

Sixteen years passed since the fall of communism and the onset of freedom in the Czech lands. A major overhauling of the Basilica Ascension of the Virgin Mary in Velehrad, Moravia began. European Commission Chairman Jose Barrosó paid a visit to the Czech Republic. By winning a victory over Norway, the Czech national football team qualified for the world cup. This year’s Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for young artists was awarded to Kateřina Šedá, whose subject matter is small places and intangible objects. Health Minister David Rath declared forced administration on the General Health Insurer (VZP).

Education Minister Petra Buzková announced that she wants the government to allocate 200 million crowns to improve foreign language instruction in Czech schools next year. “I believe that only women can return integrity to politics – men ruined everything. Women give life, men give death,” Jacques Séguél, one of the world’s most prominent and successful political campaign managers, pronounced during his visit to Prague. The Globe Theatre in Prague burned down. Jan Mládek was named agriculture minister after the dismissal of Petr Zgarba. Crime statistics showed that compared to last year the murder rate has dropped and the fraud rate increased this year. Police in riot gear dispersed a neo-Nazi gathering in Zlatá Olešnice na Jablonecko. In the contest for votes for the job of rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, the school’s current rector, Jiří Sopko, won 21 to 4 over new hopeful Vladimír Kokolia. Václav Klaus returned from a visit to India. Dangerous chemicals escaped from the Liberec plant Galvanoplast. Via the newspapers Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek called on the head of the opposition party ODS (Civic Democrats) to immediately apologize to China’s Ambassador to Prague for “spitting in the face of Chinese diplomacy” when he criticized human rights in communist China in the newspapers. “We don’t want to wait another twenty or thirty years until amply intelligent men offer women jobs in management,” media cited Norwegian Minister for Family and Equal Opportunity Karita Bekkemelem, who was explaining why her cabinet is planning to take stiff measures against companies unwilling to satisfy a two-year-old government requirement for women to comprise 40 percent of the management in every Norwegian company; according to Bekkemelem, the stiffest penalty for disobedient companies would be official liquidation. Roland Villazón sang in Prague’s Smetana Hall. After three months of tests ordered by the agricultural ministry, experts from Ceské Budějovice’s University of European Studies came to the conclusion that Uherský salami raises immunity and is just as healthy as yogurt. A protest lodged by the army to protect one of its “low-fly zones” stopped construction of eight windmills near Opatava in Vysočina. Terry Gilliam visited Prague for the premiere of his new film The Brothers Grimm. An industrial waste incinerator caught fire in Chropyně. Released statistics on European agricultural subsidies confirmed suspicions that just a few of the largest producers rake in almost all the money from Brussels, while small farmers scrape by and struggle to survive. In Prague’s Homolka Hospital, the surgical robot Da Vinci began operating on patients. “I get the feeling that, as it stands now, it doesn’t care about women – but I’m earning a living,” ČSSD (Social Democratic Party) deputy Eva Nováková said of the fact that the ratio of women on her party’s list of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections dropped from twenty-five percent for the last elections to just 11 percent this time. A bill proposed by the government banning men over the age of forty from donating sperm to artificially inseminate their own wives passed through the chamber of deputies in the first reading. Police announced that drug dealers have begun smuggling into Czechia a brand new natural substance still unknown to detectives and customs officials, and so they cannot recognize it from medicinal herbs. Castle guards prevented musician Michael Kocáb and artist Bořek Šípka from hanging a European Union flag next to Czech flags on the Prague Castle. František Skála exhibited his work in Brno. Spelunkers in Moravia’s Beauty discovered a new path from Sloup Cave to Amatér Cave, and from there all the way to Macocha Cave.