News

Two people have been killed in an ultralight plane accident near the town of Nepomuk in West Bohemia. The accident happened on Sunday morning. The plane fell to the ground and caught fire. An investigation has been launched into the cause of the crash. Last year, seven people died in the Czech Republic in ultralight plane crashes.

Around a dozen demonstrations against a visit by US President George W. Bush will take place in Prague on Monday and Tuesday, with several of them protesting US plans to extend an anti-missile shield into Central and Eastern Europe. The Prague City Hall says it has been notified of seven anti-Bush demonstrations on Monday and another three on Tuesday. The 'No to Bases' movement says it expects several thousand protesters at its demonstration on Monday outside Prague Castle against US plans to station a tracking radar in the Czech Republic. Young communists are due to demonstrate outside the US embassy also on Monday. On Tuesday, another protest will be staged near the proposed radar site, 70 kilometres south-west of Prague. Municipal officials said one event staged in favour of the radar installation had also been scheduled.

Most participants in a referendum in the village of Hvozdany rejected the construction of a US radar base in the Czech Brdy military grounds. The referendum was attended by 409 out of the 630 eligible voters, with 381 or 95 percent of them against the plan, Mayor Stanislav Kramosil said. Hvozdany has about 800 residents and is situated some five kilometres from the planned site. There have been a number of local referenda on the plan; all of them have rejected the plan. Results of local referenda are binding neither for the government nor parliament.

The first round of Czech-US talks on the radar base was completed in May. The talks are to last several months. The USA expects the Czechs to give a clear final answer regarding the base after January 1, 2008. Most of the Czech public are still against the plan, while the government, headed by the Civic Democratic Party, advocates it.

Czech anti-drugs police say they have detained two men at the centre of a Latin American drugs smuggling ring. The two men, one a 24-year old Colombian citizen of Czech origin and his 27-year-old Czech partner, were arrested in the eastern city of Ostrava. Accomplices in Argentina and Peru were also arrested in an operation coordinated with those countries' officials, a spokesman for the National Anti-drugs Brigade said. The raids, which netted a total 21 kilograms of cocaine, followed a seventh-month investigation. Four kilograms were seized in the Czech Republic and tests showed them to be 95 percent pure. Czech police estimated the haul to have a street value of 120 million crowns (5.7 million dollars). The gang also had operations in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Venezuela and Colombia. The two ringleaders could face jail sentences of up to 15 years.