The first kung fu movie in central Europe is now being shot in the Czech Republic, E15 reported Wednesday. Film director Jiří Menzel was attacked by a restaurant owner in Croatia while shooting a documentary about the country, press reported Saturday. “Smile, cameras are almost everywhere,” read a Lidové noviny headline Monday, reporting a 100% increase in the number of applications for CCTV cameras noted by the Personal Data Protection Office last year.
>>> President Václav Klaus said holidays were “barbaric anachronisms” while climbing Sněžka mountain on Monday, Mf Dnes reported. “People can’t see anything from there. Maybe they paid for the building with EU funds,” the daily quoted Klaus as saying about an observation tower located in the middle of a hill.
>>> Petr Fejk, the director of Prague’s zoo will leave the zoo for a diplomatic job in New York, press reported on Saturday. The prime minister’ son, Jakub Fischer, is heading to the Education Ministry, where he will be responsible for a project involving tertiary education, Lidové noviny said.
>>> Czechs are the world’s fourth-biggest whiners when it comes to complaining about customer service, according to a CBC News survey of 23,000 people from 23 countries in the industrialised world.
>>> A pensioner who wanted to buy peaches at a Brno stall attacked another elderly man with his walking stick, as he thought the man was taking too long, ČTK reported on Tuesday. Thirty-two percent Czechs are cutting back on food because of the economic crisis, Mf Dnes reported Tuesday.
>>> In the past week, parties disclosed their expenditures for the EU election campaign and announced how much they are going to spend on their election campaigns this autumn. Within one week, some 2,000 people sent their suggestions for the ODS election programme to the party. They want the ODS to be more right-wing, iDnes.cz reported Thursday. TOP 09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg is the most popular politician on Facebook, Týden.cz reported after counting his fans on the social network. A Factum Invenio survey, commissioned by the Social Democrats, shows Schwarzenberg to be the country’s most trusted political party leader.
>>> Leading Czech internet portal Seznam.cz is preparing to launch an online radio station for women by the end of the year. Commercial news channel Z1 will become a business channel as of September, Hospodářské noviny reported.
>>> The city of Prague fined itself CZK 54,000 for mistakes in the reconstruction of Charles Bridge. Prague’s Buddha Bar is among the 20 hottest new hotels in Europe, according to The Sunday Times.
>>> The Environment Ministry has changed the conditions for home insulation subsidies due to low demand. President Klaus signed bills on free carbon credits and smoking on Tuesday.
>>> A plane carrying Madonna landed at Prague Airport at 1am on Wednesday morning. The pop goddess has 700 bodyguards for her stay in Prague, Lidové noviny reported Thurdsday.
>>> Jiří Novák is the most common Czech name, according to a recent survey by the Interior Ministry (not Jan Novák, as is commonly believed). The Czech Republic has 199 Václav Havels.
>>> Another travel agency – Relax Max Tours – went bankrupt. ČEZ‘s consolidated net profit increased 11% to CZK 32 billion in the first half of 2009. A man who found CZK 50,000 in a dustbin in Litvínov reported the discovery to the police on Tuesday.
>>> The unemployment rate grew to 8.4% in July, up from 8% in June, the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry announced yesterday. Consumer inflation dropped to 0.3% in July, down from 1.2% in June, and the lowest level since September 2003, according to the Czech Statistical Office.
