Respekt Weekly (48/2009)Czechs mark the Velvet Revolution's 20th anniversary, national football team coach Michal Bílek makes a bad start and ČVUT experts offer an explanation for the Strašice poltergeist
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Natálka, the two-year-old Roma girl who suffered burns on 80 percent of her body in April when Czech neo-Nazis set fire to her family's home in Vítkov, spoke for the first time in six months. Records were broken when temperatures exceeded 20 degrees Celsius. The Industry Ministry reduced the purchase price of solar energy. Herman Van Rompuy became the European Union's first president. Thousands of people gathered on Národní třída in Prague to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Communist dictatorship and the advent of freedom. "New, far more sophisticated ways to control society are emerging, and it requires alertness, caution, prudence, study and perspective. And also the ability to resist the fact that freedom is a difficult, complicated thing, and inside of everyone there is a dormant desire to return to the prison, to make life easy by having less freedom," said former President Václav Havel, warning celebrating Czechs that the era of dictatorships and totalitarian regime is definitely not over. Current President Václav Klaus came to Národní třída to honor the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and, according to newspaper reports, his bodyguards had to "clear the way" to the commemorative plaque. "Don't disgrace us!" shouted members of the assembled crowd at Klaus, displeased with the president's attempts to break the European Union and bring the Czech Republic back under Russian patronage. The coal company Sokolovská uhelná stopped supplies to households. Photographers Ladislav Sitenský and Jan Reich died. The Czech economy grew in the third quarter by 0.8 percent compared to the previous period, and government analysts declared that the domestic economy's decline was over. Actress Vlasta Chramostová celebrated her 83rd birthday. The Czech Finance Ministry publicized a bank account number, 123-3328001/0710, for people who want to make a donation to the government to help reduce the national debt. A team of experts from the Czech Technical University (České vysoké učení technické) determined that the mysterious phenomena occurring for some time at a house in Strašice u Rokycany -- apparently self-igniting fires and cracking glass and light bulbs -- were caused by a person. "Experts have a theory that this is a high-frequency phenomenon and they are searching for its source," ČEZ spokesman Martin Sobotka had said, offering a scientific explanation of the mystery to the public. Participants in the UN World Summit on Food Security in Rome agreed that their aim was to eradicate hunger in the world. At an extraordinary meeting, the Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecká sněmovna) raised the budget deficit this year from the originally planned 38 billion to 52 billion crowns because of the state's potential inability to pay pensions and social benefits. The Czech national football team lost 3-2 on penalties to the United Arab Emirates and 2-0 to Azerbaijan. "Shame!" the Czech press remarked on the defeat. Several hundred locals demonstrated in the center of Chomutov calling for the resignation of Mayor Ivana Řápková, who built her political career on demanding "morality" from others but lost the moral high ground when it emerged that she had graduated from law school in Plzeň despite never being seen by any of the professors who should have supervised her exams and approved her credits. "It's just a coincidence," replied Alexandr Novák (Civic Democratic Party; ODS), a former senator and an influential north Bohemian politician, when asked by the media how he and his firm had turned a profit of over 14 million crowns from the purchase of two inconspicuous tracts of land, whose value sky-rocketed upon announcement of plans for a gas pipeline that would cut through them both. The railway tunnel in Mosty u Jablunkova collapsed. The Czech Republic dropped from 45th to 52nd place -- behind Botswana and Costa Rica -- on Transparency International's global corruption index. A survey of 20,000 patients at 14 faculty hospitals around the country showed that the hospitals in Ostrava, Plzeň and Hradec Králové treat their patients far better than those in other cities. "There was a lot of drinking going on there. If any of us did do that, it was tomfoolery, certainly not deliberate," said Brno police officer Daniel Sochor, commenting on eyewitness accounts by locals who stated that the officers at Sochor's birthday party at the Brno restaurant Nekonečno had sung racist songs, lambasted Jews, and performed the Nazi salute while shouting "I'm white, white power!" EuroAgentur Hotels & Travel opened its first kosher hotel in Prague. The APEC Summit in Singapore concluded that it would be unable to adopt the key climate change agreement aimed at restricting greenhouse gas emissions by the original deadline of December 12, 2009. An exhibition of "cursed" treasures, which, according to legend, caused the fall of the Inca empire, opened at Špilberk castle. Meteorologists concluded that the weather would be warm until mid-December. Translated By Martha J. Sullivan 
Prague TV and Respekt are working together to bring content from the Czech weekly to the international community, including the Minulý týden ("Last Week") news summary and other special feature articles. Respekt.cz |
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