Last week 30/2006

Evacuation of Czech citizens from warring Lebanon began. Darsalam, a five-year-old sorrel horse from a stable in Most, ended his racing career due to tendon problems. In Šindelová na Sokolovsku nighttime temperatures caused frost. The heads of the parliamentary parties failed to reach agreement again on who will serve as chairman of Parliament. Construction of 178 toll booths on domestic highways began.

“What happened is hounding at me. I forgot and I promise that it won’t happen again,” pronounced Police President Vladislav Husák after Mladá fronta DNES reporters caught him driving 20 km over the speed limit through an urban area and even 60 km over on a highway during his regular drive to work, which, according to the new road laws, should result in immediate revocation of his license; Husák, who recently complained in the press about Czech drivers’ “aggressiveness and no respect for the law,” concurrently rejected calls for his resignation, and his boss, Interior Minister František Bublan, refused to dismiss him, saying that police officials aren’t fired from their jobs following a “manly confession.” Part of the reconstructed building U Myšáka collapsed in the center of Prague. American experts seeking the best place for a U.S. missile base in Europe inspected the Libavá military area. Sweltering heat set in. Temperatures climbed to over 35º C. “The heat is to blame for an unusual number of suicides,” the Mladá fronta DNES daily announced to its readers. The Police Presidium canceled the already-closed tender for a supply of 6,000 pistol holsters due to suspicion of corruption. The Prague Zoo in Troja opened a marmot sanctuary. “Any strategy supporting democracy that does not include a credible and sustainable strategy for finding alternatives to oil is relegated to extinction; an effective idealist supporting democracy today can only be one who is also an effective, energetic environmentalist,”New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman wrote in the Hospodářské noviny daily. The number of Czech communities connected to wireless internet networks rose to 4,265, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of all communities with internet connections. Suzanne Vega sang in the State Opera House. At the Summer Film School in Uherské Hradiště poet Vít Kremlička read stories by Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian novelist and reporter who fought against the plundering of oil miners from Shell in his homeland during the 1990’s, for which the corrupt Nigerian government charged him with “high treason” and had him executed in December 1995. The price of flats rose. The Judges Union announced that, due to formal errors in a lawsuit filed by an unnamed citizen, a domestic court would not be resolving the question of whether or not God exists. “Špidla won, the price of diapers won’t rise!” was Hospodářské noviny’sheadline evaluating the fact that although the European Commission had formally started legal action against the Czech Republic for its reluctance to impose the valid European-wide tax rate on diapers in its own territory, it concurrently allowed Prague to keep the lower price and started working on reducing the European-wide tax rate. “Špidla failed to save cheap diapers,” was Lidové noviny’s headline for the same situation. Sinead O’Connor cancelled her concert in Prague’s Stromovka Park due to health reasons. Prague’s auction season closed with the auctioning of a Gabriel Münter painting for one million crowns. Mongolia celebrated its 800th year of independence. Eric Clapton played in Sazka Arena. Newspapers reported that Ta Mok, one of the worst murders of the last century and a general of the communist Khmer Rouge regime under whose rule roughly two million people died in Cambodia thirty years ago, had died in a Phnom Penh military hospital. The town of Polná held the grand opening of a new recreational area on the shore of the local pond Peklo. India’s Ashok Leyland bought the Letňany-based automaker Avia. New Economics Foundation, an independent British organization, published news that the Czech Republic’s consumption exceeded the country’s capacity to renew its natural resources on July 18th of this year and de facto will be living for the rest of the year on the “ecological debt” of the rest of the world; according to the British foundation, humankind as a whole will begin living on “ecological debt” in early October. Tvrdík became outgoing Premier Paroubek’s chief advisor. “You’ve made great progress… You’re slowly catching up to us,” replied communist China’s new ambassador Huo Yuzhen to the daily Právo’s question “You’ve returned to Prague after five years. Have you been surprised by any changes?” Young Czech conductors went to London for the Mostly Mozart Festival.