Prague - Acclaimed Czech-born writer Milan Kundera turned in a Western agent as a student during the Stalinist era, leading to the man's imprisonment at a labour camp, a magazine reported Monday.

Police records show that Kundera, then a 20-year-old Prague film student, denounced a young Czech exile who was spying in his native country in 1950, the Respekt weekly said.

Kundera, who later gained fame as an anti-communist dissident and international acclaim for his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, told Czechoslovak police that a former military pilot who worked for Western intelligence after escaping to Germany was staying with a female friend at a dormitory, the report said.

Prague - Gunter Demnig kneels on Prague's poshest shopping street, tapping a shining block into the cobblestone pavement beside a luxury-watch store.

"Here lived Eva Abelesova, born 1930, deported to Lodz in 1941 and murdered," reads the inscription under the Neo-Renaissance residential building at 10, Parizska Avenue.

In all, the German sculptor this week placed 10 such memorial cubes, which he calls stumbling blocks (Stolpersteine) in German, into the Prague streetscape, his first batch in the Czech Republic.

He brought them in his red van from Germany, equipped for the task with buckets of cobbling necessities: rubber-padded hammer, cement and sand.

Prague - A murky post-communist past of privatization deals and influence peddling is catching up with Czech politicians of all stripes as election season nears. But will it have an impact?

Late Thursday, a 55-year-old Prague hotelier fatally shot a 40-year-old businessman after what likely was a petty brawl at a posh downtown restaurant.

Remarkable enough in one of Europe's most charming capitals and a nation with little gun crime, the shooting reverberated because of its political connotation.

Prague - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who is scheduled to be the next European Union president, has condemned the EU's steps to fight the global financial crisis as too interventionist.

"All these measures are absolutely artificial. They contradict the EU's substance," the CTK news agency quoted Topolanek as saying late Wednesday during a visit to Turkey.

"And I have to say it is a huge disappointment. What happened in recent days has damaged confidence in the EU more than anything else," CTK cited him as saying.

Prague  - Czech energy firm CEZ said Wednesday it agreed to buy a 37.4-per-cent stake in Turkish power producer Akenerji Elektrik Uretim A S from its majority owner, the Akkok Group.

The state-controlled CEZ is to pay 302.6 million dollars to Akkok, its strategic partner in Turkey which holds some 75 per cent in Akenerji.

Prague- The Czech Republic's inflation rose slightly while unemployment remained steady in September, according to government data released Wednesday.

The inflation rate year-on-year rose a notch to 6.6 per cent in September, from 6.5 per cent recorded in August, mainly due to higher costs for education, vacations and tobacco products, the Czech Statistical Office said.