Last week 8/2007

Newspapers reported that North Korea had abandoned its efforts to develop a nuclear bomb in exchange for humanitarian aid. The price of older flats went up. Spring continued; the temperature rose to 10 degrees Celsius, and the meteorological institute informed citizens that the warm weather would last at least until mid-March. The Netherlands decided to open its labor market to European Union newcomers.

Shaman expert Pavlína Brzáková gave a lecture on the aborigines of Siberia at the Prague Zoo's educational center. Czech President Václav Klaus visited Emperor Akihito of Japan, also known as the Heavenly Sovereign.

„Having the first mayor to climb Mount Everest will be a positive thing, no doubt about that,“ said Deputy Mayor of Prague Markéta Reedová (European Democrats), commenting on the announced intention of her boss, Pavel Bém (Civic Democratic Party – ODS) to take two months off work to climb Mount Qomolangma in the Himalayas.

Measuring 10 meters by 12 meters, the cemetery in Hluboké, near Olomouc, was declared the smallest in the Czech Republic. In the Davis Cup, Czech tennis players lost 4–1 to their American counterparts. The European Commission detected an illegal cartel of nine Czech engineering holdings whose representatives clandestinely met at airports and hotels, where they charted a joint strategy to keep the prices of their wares high and to liquidate the competition; the Czech Office for Competition Protection then imposed fines on the offenders totaling one billion crowns.

A new retirement home was built in Znojmo. „A nation is a community that sits around the fireplace in the evening telling stories about itself; and those stories tell its members who they are – so, unless we want to be a horde of hockey fans chanting ‚if you're not jumping, you're not Czech,‘ we need myths,“ historian Dušan Třeštík said in reply to Lidové noviny's question, „Why does a nation need something as ambiguous as myths?“.

Jaromír Jágr celebrated his 35th birthday. Following a tip-off about a potential terrorist attack, the police beefed up security at Prague's Ruzyně airport. St. Valentine's Day was celebrated across the country. The Styl and Kabo fashion trade fairs took place in Brno. Students at the Jan Amos Komenský high school in Dubí voted to adopt school uniforms. Statisticians calculated that there were more pedestrian deaths on Czech roads this January than last.

„They signed me up there automatically when I joined the Communist Party,“ Czech TV programming director František Lambert told reporters, explaining how he came to join the People's Militia, a paramilitary unit whose members had to take an oath to kill anyone who opposed the Communist regime; the public television station's management and the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting have yet to agree on whether or not a man with that kind of relationship to freedom and that capacity for obeying the authorities should continue working for a public broadcaster.

Justice Minister Jiří Pospíšil (ODS) dismissed Jiří Kulvejt as supreme state prosecutor. General practitioners and pediatricians organized a one-day strike in protest against state health insurer Všeobecná zdravotní pojišťovna's allegedly abominable payment policies. The Czech bank Česká spořitelna announced it would become actively involved in the electric power trade in the middle of this year.

„They were not in some mysterious place – they were lying in some room in the office and just hadn't been handled as carefully as is common in the archives,“ replied the new director of the Interior Ministry security forces' archives, Pavel Žáček, when asked by Právo where the documents relating to the collaboration of local cultural, business or political celebrities (singer Jaromír Nohavica, for example, or former Prime Minister Josef Tošovský) with the Communist secret police (StB) had been located until now; the documents were made public after Žáček's appointment, prior to which nobody had any idea about them.

Mladá fronta Dnes familiarized its readers with a newly recommended diet – „How to eat meat and not gain weight.“ Miroslav Zikmund celebrated his 88th birthday with a party and the opening of his photography exhibition at the Pardubice Chateau. The Czech-Moravian Hunting Association announced a 10,000-crown reward for information leading to the apprehension of hunters who poach large, protected beasts of prey – wolves, lynx, and bears – in the countryside.

The Association of Czech Travel Agencies issued a press release saying that „Czechs have fallen in love with holidays.“ The media reported that scientists at Oxford University had used a very sensitive brain scan technique to determine a person's intention before any action has taken place. „It's not yet mind-reading, but it is definitely a step in that direction,“ said Rudolf Černý, a neurologist from Prague's Motol Hospital, commenting on the news.