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Meanwhile police in the northern town of Trutnov say the graves of 15 Jewish girls killed by the Nazis have been desecrated. Fifteen tombstones were overturned and damaged in the attack. Police are treating the incident as racially-motivated. The head of the Prague Jewish Community said the attack could be connected with the 65th anniversary of "Kristalnacht", when thousands of Jewish shops and synagogues across Germany were burned and looted by the Nazis. He said the number of attacks against Jewish monuments rose each November.

A bus driver being prosecuted over an accident in which 19 people were killed has failed to appear in court on the first day of his trial. Pavel Krbec, charged with causing the crash and also falsifying his driving licence, said he was too ill to attend proceedings. Prosecutors say Mr Krbec was driving too fast for the conditions at the time of the crash, and was not paying due attention to the road. He is also accused of falsifying his bus driver's licence, which had expired. He faces 10 years in prison if found guilty. Mr Krbec himself has filed charges against the father of one of the victims, who recently launched an Internet site describing him as a murderer.

The Czech Statistics Office said higher prices of food and non-alcoholic drinks pushed consumer prices slightly higher in October, reversing a recent trend. Prices, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), gained 0.1 per cent in October compared with September and rose 0.4 per cent from the level registered in October 2002.

The Czech Medical Chamber has for the first time expelled its member, gynaecologist Vaclav Jordan from the city of Brno. The man treated colon cancer in one of his patients although he did not have the required special post-graduate education for oncology. Besides wrongly diagnosing the diseases as more serious than it actually was, he kept invoicing a health insurance company for the expensive treatment even after the patient joined another doctor. He will not be allowed to pursue his profession and will only be able to join the Medical Chamber again in five years. He can challenge the verdict at the court. The police have charged Doctor Jordan with serious bodily harm and fraud.