Last week 49/2007

The price of oil dropped to 95 dollars per barrel. The average monthly salary rose by 1,500 crowns, and economists publicly cautioned that the present record growth of wages will soon cease. The revenues of the arms maker Omnipol grew. “By that do you mean yourself, Friend Chairman, who threatened at the regional committee to liquidate us, do you mean yourself? Sometimes I really am armed because I am afraid of you, Friend Chairman,” pronounced the head of the Social Democratic Party’s Chomutov cell, Roman Houska, at the North Bohemia Region party kingpins’ closed meeting with party chairman Jiří Paroubek after Paroubek had declared, “The tactics of intimidation and threats are used in this region and they say that one of the members of the regional committee even walks around armed,”; the account from the meeting of the Social Democratic top brass in the North of the country was reported by MF DNES. News agencies reported that Magdalena Kožená would sing in her hometown, Brno, next year. Authorities announced that the price of electricity, gas, and heat would all rise next year. The Czech police confirmed its intention to procure stun guns for local law enforcement officers even though three people have been killed by them in the last week and a U.N. commission has found them to be “a form of torture”. “A mysterious joy, pleasure from the place you are, and also a promiscuous approach to sex, the art of giving bad and banal things some other dimension. Relishing moments and the joy of life,” replied Mariusz Szczygiel, Polish journalist and author of a book of reportages about the Czech Republic, Gottland, in response to Lidové noviny’s question, “What will people in a united Europe link with the brand ‘Czech Republic’?” Two Czech skiers brutally beat and seriously injured a third Czech skier who had loudly reproved them for cutting in line for a ski lift at Boží Dar. The hospital in Městec Králové won the title “Kindest Hospital of the Year 2007” in a poll among patients. After Dana Kucthová’s dismissal, Ondřej Liška became the new education minister representing the Green Party. The Security Information Service (BIS) found that “some large state companies intentionally misrepresented their financial results last year in connection with their impending privatization; as examples, BIS named Czech Airlines, Prague Airport, ČEZ, and Čepro – all said companies immediately labeled the security service information “accusations” which they “bitterly denied”.

“It’s an attempt to smear our struggle. Most of us are subsidizing our association’s activities out of our own pockets,” remarked Jan Tamáš, who heads an alliance fighting the plan to build a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic, commenting on a Military Intelligence report stating that Russia might be financing his movement, No Bases. The Pope announced he would cancel his December 13th meeting with the Dalai Lama in consideration of protests from China’s communists. Frost and snow definitively pushed winter through. Conservationists appealed to the public not to forget to fill birdfeeders for songbirds. At the age of 91, associate professor Jaroslav Skála, the inventor of the drunk tank, passed away in Prague. The manufacturing of Škoda Octavie automobiles was launched in Russia. An appellate court annulled an earlier verdict by justice Silvie Slepičková sentencing former minister of informatics Vladimír Mlynář to five and a half years in prison for alleged fraud, and ruled that the minister was, on the contrary, wholly innocent. “This is not only about the linking of crime and state administration, about unprecedented manipulation with entities involved in criminal activity, influencing tenders, handing out subsidies – it is about the massive corruption of journalists and systematic abuse of the media,” said Mirek Topolánek, prime minister and Civic Democratic Party chairman, said at his party’s congress, describing the country’s situation in the second year of his government; after his speech, the premier declined to answer requests by his fellow party members and local journalists to substantiate his words about “massive corruption” with evidence. Statisticians calculated that Czechs would spend a billion crowns this year on game consoles and video games. With four precisely aimed bullets from close range, an unknown assailant murdered the driver of a car carrying Sazka’s director, Aleš Hušák, in Prague. A new bank, mBank, entered the local market. The draw for the World Cup qualifiers landed Czech footballers in the group with Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, and Northern Island, and local journalists labeled it “lucky”. After a five-year renovation, Masné krámy, České Budějovice’s former meat market turned restaurant, was re-opened.