“The light switches are really taped up. It is roughly one third to one half of switches in the whole building. There’s probably not everything all right with the minister,” a Justice Ministry employee has told Lidové noviny, commenting on the peculiar way of energy saving introduced by the Minister Daniela Kovářová in the ministry’s building. A patient with suicidal behaviour armed with a knife escaped from a psychiatric ward of the teaching hospital at Prague’s Karlovo náměstí on Monday afternoon. He was caught the same day in the evening. Four guests of U Českého lva restaurant in Prague’s Karlín were hurt by a hand grenade that was hidden in a suitcase brought in by one of the guests last Thursday night. Fourteen people, including seven bikers, died over the weekend on Czech roads. 62% of Czechs want death penalty to be introduced in the Czech legal system, a CVVM poll published last Friday has shown.
>>> Canada reintroduced visa obligation for Czech nationals starting from Tuesday. Czechs didn’t procrastinate and in retaliation imposed diplomatic visa on Canada. Sweden, the EU presiding country, said the EU is considering a retaliatory action against Canada. Demonstrating his disagreement with Canada’s step, a Czech owner of a chain of 22 beach restaurants in Spain has dismissed 34 Canadian students at an hour’s notice, Mf Dnes reported on Thursday.
>>> “Mr. (Karel) Schwarzenberg…has been suffering from selective amnesia and I could even use a more derogatory expression. And I will use it if this man continues in his disgusting invective,” wrote Jiří Paroubek in a statement reacting to the criticism in connection with his recent visit to Russia where Paroubek met with the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin without reportedly informing the Czech Foreign Affairs Ministry. 90% of Czech women have at least once in their lives faked headache, Právo wrote on Thursday. It’s getting more and more difficult to find a dentist in the Czech Republic, Lidové noviny reported on Thursday.
>>> Antonio Banderas impressed Karlovy Vary on the weekend. John Malkovich and his partner drank as many as five cups of cappuccino for breakfast, Richard Lhoták, Grandhotel Pupp’s head of catering services told Novinky.cz. The owner of Ambiente restaurant group, Tomáš Karpíšek, is planning to open a typical Czech restaurant called Lokal in September that will offer dishes made from Czech ingredients. Czechs prefer butter to margarines at the time of crisis, Mf Dnes reported on Tuesday. The popularity of peppermint liqueur and other cheap kinds of liqueurs has been raising rapidly, according to the same daily. 3200 packages of mouldy raisins were seized by the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority on Tuesday. A lorry loaded with raspberries blocked Prague road on Wednesday all day. One more tunnel will be built in Prague, Lidové noviny reported on Tuesday. The Kapsch company responsible for the construction of the motorway e-toll system will have to pay CZK 171 million to the state for various shortcomings in the system, PM Jan Fischer said on Monday.
>>> Thirty-degree heats and blue-green algae are coming back to the Czech Republic, a Mf Dnes headline said on Tuesday. Czech travel agencies have proposed extending the overall summer holiday period to four months, with each region having the holidays at different time. Because of the early general elections, politicians are not going to spend their holidays far from Prague, Právo reported on Saturday.
>>>A Czech man who had taken about 2,500 photographs of naked children aged three to six was arrested in Croatia. Online portal babyweb.cz has launched a project that will list child-friendly places in the Czech Republic. ‘Mainly mothers and married women scored’, said a Mf Dnes headline on Tuesday, referring to the women’s Prague Open tennis tournament that started on Štvanice the day before. Thanks to the success of Czech tennis team in Ostrava on the weekend, the Czech Republic will compete in Davis Cup semifinals for the first time in 13 years in September.
>>> Singer Karel Gott, nicknamed the golden nightingale, held a grandiose celebration of his 70th birthday in Prague’s hotel Ambassador on Monday. “I don’t have time for stupid things,” Vítězslav Jandák (ČSSD), a member of a the lower house education committee, reacted to the protesting students’ call that he takes the unified school leaving exam, according to Saturday Lidové noviny.
>>> This year’s grain crop will be 15% lower than last year, according to the Agrarian Chamber and the Czech Statistical Office. An expensive fungus, truffle, was found for the first time in central Moravia, Lidové noviny reported on Wednesday. Wild boar have overpopulated and are threatening especially mushroom collectors, Právo reported on Tuesday.
>>> Jiří Janeček was re-elected the Czech Television director on Wednesday. The ODS regional representatives didn’t succeed in dismissing David Rath (ČSSD) from his post of Central Bohemia regional governor on Tuesday. The number of people supporting more women in politics has increased. The authors of the poll attribute the increase to the fact that this year’s poll did not use the word “quota”, which is perceived negatively and not understood by many people, Lidové noviny reported on Wednesday.
>>> Prague taxi drivers and police clashed at the Old Town Square on Thursday. Prague 1 town hall has installed a CCTV camera in Truhlářská street in order to monitor squatters who moved in one of the buildings on the street last week.
