Last week 5/2006

The media reported that Hamas had won the elections in Palestine. Freezing temperatures struck. Prague City Assembly had heated army tents providing 100 beds built on Letná for the homeless. ATMs in Liberec and Ostrava froze up. The Chamber of Deputies passed the conflict of interest law. An unidentified hitman in Prague shot dead František Mrázek, a businessman from the company Český olej (Czech Oil) and an associate of businessman Tomáš Pitr, whom Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek recently called an „enemy of the state“ due to his unclear role in the government's bribery scandal with Unipetrol.

„I won’t back down, my office doesn't rest on one employee who, moreover, didn't even have any chance of influencing anything,“ National Security Office director Jan Mareš said in reaction to calls for his resignation as a consequence of the fact that the police have accused the head of his office, Vladimír Šiša, of conveying information to gangsters. The boys' choir Boni pueri paid tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a concert in Třebič. The ministry of education commenced work on a government plan to support the founding of new secondary schools. The neo-Nazi National Party (Národní strana) organized a demonstration in Lety u Písku to support President Václav Klaus' belief that there was no concentration camp for Roma citizens there during World War II, but rather a quarantine for typhus-infected „persons not adhering to hygiene standards and work-shy people'; at the request of the neo-Nazis, the police arrested peace activist Marcus Pape during the demonstration for shouting out "Stop Nazism“ during the anti-Roma speech of National Party chairwoman Petra Edelmannová. A computer defect stopped the last Pendolino express train still running, in a field beyond Krasíkov, and sent it to the repair depot where the other four defective trains are. „No,“ responded 80 percent of Czechs surveyed – the most in the entire EU – to a question posed by the European polling agency Eurobarometer, „Do you think your vote has any clout in the EU?“; two-thirds of those surveyed also admitted that they have no idea how the EU functions. An avalanche killed a skier on Smrk Peak in the Beskyd Mountains. The domestic PEN Club awarded this year's Karel Čapek Prize to novelist Jiří Stránský. Restorers discovered a gothic painting by the master craftsman of the Třeboň altar under the plaster on Prague's St. Anna's Church. For taking photos in Havana's poor neighborhoods, Cuban police arrested top model and Miss Czech Republic 1999 Helena Houdová, who went to Cuba to see if she could somehow help the poor children of Castro's totalitarian empire through her charity organization; the police released her after 11 hours and charged her Cuban guide, Yusniama Jorge Soca, with the illegal activity „walking with foreigners.“ Tomáš Řepka returned to Sparta after an eight-year absence. Dagmar Pecková sung Mozart arias in the State Opera House. Agriculture Minister Jan Mládek met with EU agricultural commissioner Marianna Fischer Boel about whether Pohořelický kapr (Pohořelice carp) and Štramberské uši (Štramberk ears – gingerbread sweets) could be included on the list of European-wide protected food specialties. „I’m appealing because I believe the sentence is excessive,“ said a 20-year-old before an Opava court; the man had been sentenced to five years in prison and had his driving license revoked for eight years for a drunken driving episode last year during which he drove onto a sidewalk and killed two young women. Singer Paul McCartney's wife Heather told the British weekly The Observer that according to her information gathered over a one-year period, dogs and cats are bred on special farms in the Czech Republic, China, and Belgium, which the farm-owners then skin alive for the needs of the clothing industry; Czech diplomats and veterinarians denied her claims. There was a leak of radioactive water at Temelín nuclear power plant; by fluke, no employees were killed or exposed to radiation. In a survey, domestic oncologists chose the 18 best hospitals for cancer treatment. „Although the results of such searches are in breach of Google's mission, not providing any information at all would be an even bigger breach of our mission,“ Lidové noviny cited Google representative Andrew McLaughlin as saying in way of explanation of why his company, in an effort to beat its biggest competitor on the Chinese market, Baidu.com, promised China's Communist authorities that in exchange for various business advantages it would not let users in China search for „politically sensitive themes“ – e.g. the massacre of students in Peking's Tiananmen Square in 1989 and many others.