>>> Politicians arrived to ballot boxes dressed in casual clothes, read a headline in Saturday’s Právo – both ČSSD head Jiří Paroubek and ODS leader Mirek Topolánek were wearing jeans and leather jackets while going to cast their votes in the European Parliament elections on Friday. The ODS trounced Social Democrats, winnig 31.44% of votes, some 9% more than the ČSSD. Martin Bursík resigned as the head of the Greens after his party’s failure in the elections – with slightly more than 2% of votes, the Greens did not make into the European Parliament. An unknown number of people in Prague were not able to vote as their names were not included on the voter registration lists in the districts where they reside, Hospodářské noviny reported on Monday. President Václav Klaus said he was disappointed by the low voter turnout, which was at 28%.
>>> Czechs elected 22 euro millionaires, Lidové noviny said on Monday, pointing out the fact that MEPs belong among the best paid representatives of the Czech Republic. “We expect a higher growth in the number of robberies with respect to the financial crisis, it will show in the second half of the year,” Petr Choděra, a member of the Czech Banking Association and a security manager in GE Money Bank has said. The Czech Republic’s public debt is growing by CZK 5,705 per second, analyst Aleš Michl from Raiffeisenbank has calculated.
>>> Czechs are the biggest consumers of Tartare sauce in Europe and possibly also in the world, Vladimír Polomský from H.J.Heinz, the world’s biggest producer of ketchup, told Mf Dnes on Wednesday. Sixteen stalls selling fast food, flowers, and other goods located near the Tesco shopping centre at Spálená street started to be dismantled on Tuesday giving way to the future business and administrative Copa centrum to be built at the site.
>>> The Czech Republic is officially in recession, as its GDP fell quarter-on-quarter for the second time in a row. In the first three months of the year the Czech economy dropped by 3.4%. Finance Minister Eduard Janota predicted on Monday that the economy could grow 2.4% in 2011 and 3% in 2012. The Czech Republic’s foreign trade reached a CZK 12 billion surplus in April, a year-on-year improvement of CZK 5.6 billion, according to the Czech Statistical Office.
>>> The interim cabinet of Jan Fischer won confidence of the lower house on Sunday. The Pivo České republiky 2009 title has been granted to Holba’s 12º lager. The American actor, director and producer John Malkovich will receive the Crystal Globe award for contribution to world cinema at the 44th Karlovy Vary film festival, newspapers wrote on Wednesday.
>>> President Václav Klaus signed five fake copies of the Lisbon Treaty on Monday submitted to him by students during Klaus’s book signing in a Brno bookstore, Lidové noviny has reported. Petr Hájek, the Czech president’s aide, wrote in his new book of essays called Smrt ve středu that the 9/11 attacks may have been organised by US intelligence services and that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was invented by the media, Mladá fronta Dnes reported on Wednesday.
>>> Former Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg will be the leader of the new conservative party TOP 09 formed by the former Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek, Kalousek said on Thursday. Several KDU-ČSL MPs left their party in the past week in order to join Kalousek’s TOP 09. In an interview for Wednesday’s Právo, Former Education Minister Ondřej Liška called Kalousek’s new party a “marketing trick on voters”.
>>> ODS leader Mirek Topolánek was given away by the white rubber bracelet that he’s wearing on his right wrist, Lidové noviny reported on Saturday. Topolánek admitted last Friday that one of the nude photographs published in the Spanish left-leaning daily El País the week before depicted his naked body, but said that the shot was modified in a photomontage. He speculated that publishing of the photographs on the day of European Parliament elections was a part of a socialist campaign.
>>> The police arrested 10 people suspected of propagating nazism in a series of coordinated raids around the country on Tuesday. Right-wing extremism supporters protested against the crackdown in several Czech towns the following day. On Tuesday, politicians across political spectrum signed an agreement on a joint action against rising extremism and racism.
