Prague  - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, one of the most prominent climate change doubters, is about to get a new platform: the European Union presidency.

Klaus has called man-made global warming a myth and questioned sanity of Al Gore, the former US vice president who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for turning a spotlight on climate change.

Most recently, Klaus expressed hopes the EU would give up its ambitious plan to spearhead the global struggle against climate change in the face of the global financial crisis.

From his vantage point in Prague's Hradcany castle, Klaus could be involved in negotiating a new set of EU climate laws while the Czech Republic chairs the EU in the first half of 2009.

Prague - The Czech Republic's Constitutional Court Tuesday opened a public hearing after which it may rule on whether the European Union's reform treaty is consistent with the country's constitution.

The Czech Republic is the last of the 27 EU members that has yet to vote on the treaty, which has been stalled since Irish voters rejected it in a June referendum. Ireland was the only member state to put the treaty to a public vote.

The long-awaited Czech ruling will either open the way for a vote on the accord in country's bicameral parliament or bring it closer to its death.

Prague  - The Czech government Monday asked the country's Highest Administrative Court to outlaw the far-right Worker's Party, whose events are commonly attended by neo-Nazis, official said.

Interior Minister Ivan Langer said the party violates Czech law, which outlaws political groups that aim to abolish democracy.

He said that actions by the Worker's Party "are not and will not be tolerated in the Czech Republic".

Public protests organized by the Worker's Party have been commonly attended by neo-Nazis, experts on the country's far-right extremist scene have said.

Prague  - Two Polish miners died and three were slightly injured when a coal mine in north-eastern Czech Republic in which they were working suffered a seismic movement, the mining company's owner said Sunday.

The movement occurred before midnight Saturday as 21 Polish miners were extracting coal in the underground mine, which belongs to the country's largest mining company OKD, said Vladimir Bystrov, a spokesman for OKD's parent company New World Resources.

The causes of the jolt were not immediately known and an investigation was under way, Bystrov said.

The dead miners, aged 39 and 46, were the first earth-tremor victims in OKD's mines this year, he said. Five other people had so far died in the firm's mines in 2008.

Prague - Russia's largest oil producer Lukoil would like to buy into a Czech refinery, the business daily Hospodarske Noviny reported Friday, citing Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov.

Lukoil, which already owns a chain of 44 petrol stations in the Czech Republic, was especially interested in a share in Ceska Rafinerska, the country's largest crude processing firm.

"We would be satisfied with 16 per cent," the Hospodarske Noviny business daily cited Alekperov as saying.