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The Czech government has decided to free 234 million crowns (a little over 10 million US dollars) from the state budget to purchase over 93 hectares of land in an industrial zone close to the north-western town of Most. The owner of the land has sued the Czech state for granting the construction of an aluminium works in the zone. Speaking to journalists on Monday, Prime Minister Paroubek said the state hopes to buy the land in an out-of-court settlement.

The Czech ice hockey team have secured a place in the last eight of the World Championships in Latvia with a win over Canada. The Czechs were 3:0 ahead after just 14 minutes of Sunday's game and then held on to secure a deserved 6:4 victory.

A tragic accident between the Bohemian towns of Ceska Budejovice and Tabor has left two people dead and eight injured. The accident occurred on Monday afternoon, when a lorry crashed into eight vehicles that stood at a traffic light on a stretch of the E55 motorway where a bridge was under reconstruction. The cause of the accident has yet to be determined, though police suspect the 25 year old lorry driver was simply inattentive and failed to respect the speed limit.

The Czech Republic already "consumed" most of the advantages that membership in the European Union brings before it joined the EU, President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday. Speaking at a seminar at Prague's Carolinum, Mr Klaus said the country's expenses have been outweighing the benefits of EU membership ever since EU accession two years ago. The union has moved from a phase of liberalisation to one of centralisation; as a result, Czech citizens are now struggling with excessive paper work, and abundance in legislation, the president said.

Every tenth Czech has an alcohol problem, a leading expert on alcoholism warned on Monday. Dr Petr Popov from the General Faculty Hospital in Prague says he has also been recording a rise in the number of alcoholic women and children. For every one man, there are two women undergoing treatment today. With an annual consumption of ten litres per person, Czechs are believed to be among the highest consumers of spirits in Europe.

As of January 1 2007, there should be no caged or netted beds in use in Czech institutional care, a new social services law stipulates. According to Martin Zarsky from the labour and social affairs ministry, the use of the beds is no longer among the measures authorised to control patients. Though the law was signed by the president in March, the news has come as a surprise to many institutions where netted and caged beds are still in use. Some of them have expressed fear that they will have neither the budget nor the extra staff necessary to implement the changes.

International NGOs have repeatedly criticised Czech social and mental institutions for their use of caged and netted beds. They say the measure is inhumane and would not be necessary if institutions had more staff and adopted more modern forms of treatment.

Czech cyclist Jan Hruska has been suspended from racing for two weeks. Mr Hruska was one of 40 riders due to take part in the Tour of Catalonia, who underwent blood testing on Monday. Following the health checks, he was the only one not permitted to race, Reuters news agency reported. The 3 Molinas Resort rider is a former winner of two stages of the Tour of Italy. His most recent success was last week, when he took the overall victory in the Clasica Alcobendas stage race in Spain. The Tour of Catalonia finishes on Sunday.

The Czech newspaper, Mlada Fronta Dnes, has printed two promissory notes that allegedly prove that the Social Democratic Party owes millions of crowns to a controversial businessman. Radovan Krejcir claims he loaned 60 million crowns (some 2.5 million US dollars) to the party four years ago in order to help finance its election campaign. He says the two promissory notes were signed by the former Social Democrat leader Stanislav Gross in 2002. The Social Democrats have rejected the allegations and Mr Gross says the signatures are forged.

The police have also expressed doubt at the authenticity of the promissory notes. During a police raid in March, a fax was found holding clear instructions on how to forge a promissory note. They included a detailed explanation of the graphic design, the colour, and personal information on Mr Gross. Radovan Krejcir currently lives on the Seychelles. He fled the Czech Republic last year as he is wanted on a number of charges including tax evasion and conspiracy to murder.

Hasan Mubarak Sami, a Qatar national, has won the 12th annual Prague Marathon. Sami beat the expected favourites from Kenya with a time of 2:11:11. Today's victory was Sami's third of his marathon career. In the women's race, Alina Ivanovova of Russia came first with a time of 2:29:20; Ivanovova also won the women's race of the Prague Marathon in 2000.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has been elected chairman of the Social Democratic Party at a special congress held over the weekend. 479 of 521 party members, or ninety-two percent of the party delegates voted for Paroubek to replace Bohuslav Sobotka, who was the Social Democratic Party's provisional chairman after the resignation of former Prime Minister Stanislav Gross last year. Jiri Paroubek admitted that his election is in large part a public declaration of the Social Democratic Party's unity before the upcoming elections. Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek declared that his immediate goal now is to win the June elections and prevent a possible coalition of Civic Democrats, Christian Democrats and the Green Party.

Social Democratic Party delegates also voted for Zdenek Skromach to be the new vice-chairman of the party. Eighty-nine percent of delegates voted for Skromach, who ran with the support of Prime Minister Paroubek and was the only candidate for the position of vice-chairman.