Last week 8/2006

Pharmaceutical suppliers stopped delivering drugs to three large Czech hospitals due to debts: Prague’s Bulovka and Thomayer hospitals and Brno’s St. Anna Hospital. It warmed up. Melting snow reduced the water level in rivers. The media reported that Iran is definitely trying to build an atom bomb, and that its newest missiles can even reach the Czech Republic; parliamentary foreign affairs committee member Vladimír Laštůvka refused to answer the question of whether he still advocates helping Iran with its nuclear program. Former constitutional court justice Antonín Procházka died. Two fifteen-year-old girls, twins, were hit and killed by a freight train while crossing the tracks near Jirkov. “Gott is the most cryptogramic flower on the Czech art scene, one who’s not easy to approximate,” said writer Arnošt Lustig, commenting on the fact that singer Karel Gott refused to approve the text to his ready-to-print book interview Gott ist Lustig, Lustig ist Gott, and proposed that they record the entire book and re-write it from the beginning.

The number of windbreaks in the woods rose. Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda called on the European Union to give Denmark solidarity compensation for the blow to exports it has suffered since a number of Arab nations terminated diplomatic relations with Copenhagen, and, besides setting fire to Danish embassies, Arabs began boycotting Danish products after a Danish paper published several caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Interior Minister František Bublan met with leaders of the local Muslim community who gave him the book Mohammed, God’s Messenger and assured him that there is no threat of violent protests against the caricatures of the Prophet here in the Czech Republic. The price of one liter of gas dropped by five crowns. Flat prices in Prague have reached those in Western Europe. “Because my respect for the truth is even stronger than my distaste for Václav Klaus, I humbly admit that some things are right, even if Václav Klaus is the one doing them,” remarked Catholic scholar Tomáš Halík after the president vetoed the law on registered partnership for homosexuals. “Although I often disagree with President Klaus, I agree with his opinion that people from Greenpeace threaten democracy,” declared Deputy Vlastimil Aubrecht (ČSSD) after the Czech Greenpeace office honored him with the title “Climatekiller” and issued an “arrest warrant” for him with a “reward” of 317,000 tons of non-emitted emissions from untapped brown coal deposits for trying to cancel coal mining limits in northern Bohemia for coal barons. “Your car will experience an unforgettable time with our artists’ cars,” new billboards in front of the National Theatre’s underground parking lot announced to drivers. A passenger train derailed at the station in Brodek u Přerov. Former minister Jaroslav Bureš returned to the Supreme Court. A hangar with toys and animal feed burned down in Milovice. European parliamentarians passed a law on the liberalization of services. “Of course I am. But couldn’t you ask about significant things?” Czech Olympic hockey coach Alois Hadamczik said in response to Mladá fronta DNES reporter’s question, “Are you glad that the long wait for the tournament is over?” After that Hadamczik’s wards lost 2:3 to the Swiss. The Green Party exceeded the five-percent mark in a voter preference poll, setting out on its path to the parliament. The Support and Guarantee Fund called on the company Czech Oil to return to the state its forty-percent share in the factory Setuza, which former agriculture minister and the fund’s ex-director Jaroslav Palas (ČSSD) recently sold to businessmen associated with Czech Oil under suspicious circumstances and very disadvantageous conditions for the Czech state. ČEZ stock continued to fall. Bird flu arrived in Austria and made it to the Czech Republic’s southern border. Authorities issued a directive calling for all domestic poultry to be raised only in closed spaces, with high fines for those who violate the directive. Miroslav Šlouf became the elections advisor to the leader of ČSSD’s candidates for Prague, David Rath. “It would be naïve to think we’ll manage to wipe out robbery altogether, but the situation has improved a lot,” said Prague Lord Mayor Pavel Bém, after he was robbed in the capital city by a taxi driver who charged him double the normal price during a test ride while he was disguised as a foreigner; during a test ride last year, Bém, dressed as a tourist, was charged eight times the fair price for the same trip. Newspapers reported that Slovakia had become the Central European tiger. After fourteen days of freezing temperatures, ice melted and the Elbe River became navigable again.