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The upper house of the Czech Parliament, the Senate, held a special session on Tuesday to mark 10 years of its existence. Since the first session held in 1996, altogether 182 senators have been elected to the chamber. The Senate has 81 members and one third of them are replaced in elections every two years.

Beer production in the Czech Republic has grown by four percent this year and is expected to reach 19.8 million hectolitres at the end of the year, the head of the Czech Brewers' Association, Jan Vesely, said. Exports are expected to reach 3.5 million hectolitres compared to 3.1 million last year. The annual per capita consumption of beer in the Czech Republic remains at 160 litres. According to estimates, foreign tourists consume around 12 percent of the beer sold on the Czech market.

Czech side FC Brno are to consider selling their goalkeeper Martin Lejsal to Middlesbrough of the English Premiership, their manager Karel Jarusek said on Tuesday. Faced with economic problems, the Czech club is prepared to sell its star keeper, he added. Before returning to Brno at the end of 2005, Lejsal, 24, played for the Italian clubs Reggina, Padua and Venice. He was called up to the Czech national squad for the first time in November for the friendly against Denmark which ended in a 1-1 draw.

The Czech ombudsman Otakar Motejl, who has been re-elected to the post for a second term, has taken oath of office. Mr Motejl's first term of office expired on Monday and he will now hold the post for another six years. The role of the ombudsman - or public defender of rights - is to defend citizens from the country's bureaucrats, whether from discrimination or excessive red tape. In the past six years, Mr Motejl's office received around 30,000 complaints from the public.

The Prague city hall has finally decided to buy a special river boat to provide shelter to homeless people. The boat which will provide 250 beds, a canteen and sanitary facilities, will cost 23 million crowns (around a million USD) and should welcome its first guests in mid-January. The city hall is still deciding where exactly the boat should be anchored. According to estimates there are up to 6,000 homeless people in the Czech capital and only 600 beds available in shelters.

The Regional Court in Prague has decided to reopen the case of the fugitive convict Rostislav Roztocil, who was sentenced in 1985 to 24 years in prison for murder. Mr Roztocil, who maintains his innocence, was sentenced in absentia after emigrating to the West in the 1980s. He was detained in 2000 at a border crossing while trying to enter the Czech Republic. Last year he escaped from prison and was detained in Germany. German courts ruled that Mr Roztocil could be extradited to the Czech Republic on condition he would be granted a new trial.

Social Democrat chairman Jiri Paroubek has admitted his party might be in opposition. Speaking on Czech Radio on Tuesday, Mr Paroubek said he no longer counted on the vote of MP Milos Melcak who has left the Social Democrat parliamentary party. Upon leaving, Mr Melcak did not rule out he might vote for a possible government of the Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Greens which would otherwise have the support of exactly half of the votes in the lower house.

An annual report by the Czech school inspectorate suggests that the Czech Republic will face a lack of kindergartens in a few years time while the number of high schools will exceed demand in the future. That will be the case in areas where the authorities have failed to react to a changing birth rate. The office also says it is worried by the number of injuries at primary schools. The inspectorate also examined the readiness of primary schools for an education reform scheduled to kick off in two years time.

The Czech Business Inspectorate this year seized a record 800,000 counterfeit CDs and DVDs, TV Nova reported. The fake goods, mostly sold at outdoor markets near the country's borders, were worth almost 500 million CZK (23.7 million USD).

A long expected film version of Bohumil Hrabal's novel "I Served the King of England", directed by Jiri Menzel, will premiere on Monday night in Prague. Menzel, who won an Oscar for his dramatisation of the Hrabal novel 'Closely Observed Trains' in 1967, was selected to direct the film last year following a legal confusion about the rights to the project lasting for ten years.