Last week 7/2007

Former Czech president Václav Havel called on the Czech government to forego holding a referendum and to permit the US government to build a radar base in Brdy intended to protect security in the USA. The warm weather continued. People started selling snow-drop bouquets in the streets. Czech media reported that global warming would make potatoes more valuable. Senators stripped their colleague Jiří Čunek (Christian Democratic Party) of immunity and turned him over to the police, who are investigating how this member of the upper chamber came into millions as Vsetín mayor, deposited it in various banks, and today does not remember where the money came from, which has raised suspicion that the source was bribes.

At the same time, Čunek faces allegations of sexual harassing his secretary at Vsetín City Hall. “Which Wallach doesn’t pat a woman’s bottom sometime – I’m sure this is just some personal matter between them,” said the director of Vsetín’s Charity and Čunek devotee Květoslava Othová, commenting on the allegations for the news server www.aktualne.cz. A gambling club in Zlín burned down. The first month of Czech polar scientists’ work began in their new station on James Ross Island. Unknown vandals set fire and destroyed a group of centuries old oak trees near Stroupeč na Žatecku. Jindřich Šídlo won this year’s Ferdinand Peroutka Prize. It came to light that the Kaufland supermarket in Hradec Králové sells poultry patés with worms in it. “What we told to Parliament in May is being confirmed – we were purposely criminalized,” said detective Jaroslav Hruška of the Unit for Detecting Organized Crime, commenting on the Interior Ministry Inspection’s decision to shelve Hruška’s case and drop the fraud charges concerning travel orders against the detective, due to which his office was raided by servile police officers before last year’s elections and his computer seized, which was generally considered at that time as an attempt by the then governing Social Democratic Party to prevent Hruška from further investigating the “bio-alcohol affair,” where the links to corruption reached all the way to the highest echelon of the Social Democratic Party; in reaction to the raid emerged the Unit commander Jan Kubice’s famed report for Parliament’s Security Committee in he which wrote that organized crime had wormed its way among top Czech government officials and politicians. Juliette Gréco celebrated her eightieth birthday. The renovated auditorium of the Masaryk Cultural House in Židlochovice was opened. Czech Television programming director František Lambert admitted that prior to November 1989 he had been in the People’s Militia, a paramilitary unit whose members had to give their oath to kill anyone who tried to overthrow the communist regime. “He not only fulfilled all the set tasks, but even went way above and beyond them,” said the Czech Television Council, explaining why it gave CT Director Jiří Janeček a 330,000-crown half-year bonus. Mladá fronta DNES proclaimed that young Czechs have stopped fearing AIDS. The Constitutional Court approved a wage freeze on judicial salaries. In the Klokočí cliffs, a forty-year-old man slipped on a trail and, after a three-meter fall, landed with his head wedged downwards and feet caught in a chasm over a fifty-meter gorge; his scream echoed all the way to the faraway village of Klokočí, where an attentive woman called rescuers, who managed to save the cold and slightly injured man from the grips of certain death in less than an one hour. Legendary fighter agains the fascist and communist regimes Hilda Čiháková-Hojerová died at the age of ninety-seven in Prague. The government rejected a proposal put forth by deputies Šplíchal (Social Democratic Party) and Bratrský (Civic Democratic Party) for each Olympic medalist to receive a 20,000-crown bonus with their pension. “The West is basically a saturated, waterlogged society, a fact that can be recognized by the passion with which we devote ourselves to animal rights and other whims,” wrote commentator Daniel Kaiser in Lidové noviny. Scientists informed the public that clones can be eaten. The head of Hyundai Motor Chong Mong-ku was sentenced in Seoul to three years in prison for embezzling company funds, and the company’s management announced immediately after the verdict that the construction of Hyundai’s new factory in Nošovice would be delayed. The Czech Republic fought its way to first place on the list of European power exporters. Jan Hřebejk’s film Kráska v nesnázích (Beauty in Trouble) won the prize for best foreign film in the Santa Barbora International Film Festival.