Last week 9/2006

Eight hundred people visited the traditional sauerkraut tasting festival at Stará pošta in Velká nad Veličkou. After a period of melting snow, frost returned. Bird flu arrived in Slovakia and authorities declared that a mandatory count of hens will be conducted in at-risk areas as soon as it crosses the border. The Winter Olympics in Tourino ended. Despite all efforts exerted by Czech athletes, Lidové noviny’s hope that “Italy will be blinded by the sparkle of Czech medals” failed to become a reatity. “When we hit two-hundred and fifty-five, he complained that the car wouldn’t go any faster,” the manager of the Czech skijumpers, František Jež, said to the news site iDnes.cz, describing how one of his charges, Jakub Janda, recently drove after receiving a gift from his sponsor – a new Mercedese-Benz Viano.

One-hundred-and-forty years passed since the ban on public executions in the Czech lands came into force. The Association of Pharmaceutical Distributors reinstated the suspended supply of drugs to the three most indebted Czech hospitals. Discontented doctors demonstrated on Old Town Square in Prague, calling for health Minister David Rath’s resignation. It surfaced that the prime minister’s advisor Jiří Vyvadil secretly met with businessman Tomáš Pitr to discuss the sale of Pitr’s Setuza to the financial group PPF; Pitr recently acquired Setuza from Agriculture Minister Jaroslav Palas (ČSSD – Czech Social Demecratic Party) with a one-hundred-thousand-crown discount. But then he fell out of favor with the party because he accused Social Democratic politicians of corruption; Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek has called him an “enemy of the state” ever since. “Businessman Tomáš Pitr wants to flee the country, issue a warrant for him – that is Prime Minister Paroubek’s wish,” the newspaper Mladá fronta cited from a letter in which municipal court vice-chairman Bohuslav Horký informed Justice Minister Pavel Němec last year how the secret service had allegedly pressured a judge to make the police look into Pitr’s case and have the businessman taken into custody; Paroubek subsequently denied any intervention in the Pitr affair. Ice floes raised the water level of the Bečva River. While shooting a fight scene in Prague, an extra knocked out two of James Bond’s front teeth and the actor’s personal dentist had to fly to Prague to fix Agent 007’s teeth. The European Union decided to impose duty on shoe imports from China and Vietnam. On the basis of an anonymous tip, a police commando arrested a man who had been hiding beneath the floor of a house in Jiříkov for four years to avoid a one-year prison sentence, which he had been handed by the court in Dědin for petty larceny. Sekyra Group was banned from building flats in Dubai. Seventeen-thousand people signed a petition calling on the Senate to ban the popular reality show Wife Swap. Bureaucrats in Brussels declared that Czech farmers would get a large fine for continually exceeding the agreed national quotas on milk production, and nobody knows what to do with the millions of liters of extra milk that nobody wants. “I’m not a fan of such lofty pronouncements,” responded cross country skier Kateřina Neumannová to a question by a sports reporter from MfD, who asked her after winning the silver medal: “After the Czech hockey team won in Nagano, people shouted, ‘Hašek to the Castle!’ What if we start hearing ‘Neumannová to the Castle!’? Would you go for it, even though a woman hasn’t governed yet?” Besides the silver medal, Neumannová subsequently won a gold medal for the 30-kilometer race. The driver of a horse pulling logs on Svatý Kopeček u Olomouce caught his leg on the chain and had to have it amputated. Czech guides celebrated International Guide Day. The body of a newborn baby was found in the garbage separating machinery at Tachov dump. A delegation of deputies led by House of Deputies Chairman Lubomír Zaorálek set off to China for an official visit. Two Czech thieves robbed the post office in the Austrian town of Kemmelbach, but failed to make a clean getaway when they wrecked their car as they were fleeing – in a panic, they left both the booty and their passports in the car. A woman froze on a trail in the Beskyd Mountains. Several signs informing drivers of potential troubles on the road ahead and of ways to avoid them were placed on the D1 highway. Heating oil leaked into the Úpa River from Piano Penzion in Velká Úpa, where it endangered the potable water supply for the Krokonoše Mountains. Vienna’s Volksoper Opera House added composer Leoš Janáček’s Mr. Brouček’s Trip to its repertoire. At a meeting of entrepreneurs and politicians in Velkopřerov Palace of the Sovereign Order of Maltese Knights in Prague, Deputy Vlastimil Tlustý (ODS) founded the anti-communist committee for the defense of freedom.