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Two Czechs who were arrested in Cuba in March of this year after starting a fight and shouting insulting remarks about Fidel Castro are to be tried next week, according to a report published in the Florida-based El Nuevo Herald. Zdeněk Tovara, 25, and Jaroslav Jiřík, 32, were arrested during a scuffle at Havana’s international airport and have been charged with causing public disorder, damaging property and resisting arrest. The two reportedly turned up at the airport drunk and started a fight, causing damage to property is some of the airport shops. They were also heard shouting obscenities about the Cuban communist leadership. El Nuevo says that if found guilty the men would face up to five years in prison.

The Czech National Bank on Thursday published a revised economic forecast according to which the national economy is expected to fall by 4.4 percent this year but to grow by 1.4 percent next year. The bank’s previous forecast released in August, expected GDP to fall by 3.8 percent this year and to grow by 0.7 percent next year. National Bank Governor Zdeněk Tůma said the economy had already hit the bottom and was on the rebound. Next year we expect moderate growth tempered by the budgetary policy and growing unemployment, Tůma said.

A Prague court has sent a forty-eight-year-old man to ten years in jail for sexually abusing the ten-year-old daughter of his live-in-girlfriend. The abuse reportedly took place while the woman, a Ukrainian national, was out working. It is said to have gone on for three years while the man threatened the child that she and her mother would be sent back to Ukraine if she reported him. The mother claims she had no idea of what was happening.

The Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday established a parliamentary commission to investigate the Plzeň law faculty scandal involving plagiarism and a fast-track diploma scheme that has been the focus of much attention in recent weeks. The Social Democratic Party, which tabled the proposal, said they fear the college’s new dean, Civic Democrat Jíři Pospíšil, constitutes no guarantee of an independent investigation into the matter. Mr Pospíšil assumed the post of dean without giving up his parliamentary mandate, which some argue will make him unable to investigate the diplomas of his fellow MPs. The majority of Civic Democratic MPs voted against the commission, in which they will have equal representation with the rival Social Democrats. A number of Czech politicians have been implicated in the scandal over fast-track-diplomas, with prominent Civic Democrat Marek Benda the latest to come to attention in the highly publicised affair.