Prague - The Czech power giant CEZ is to build two wind- powered electricity generating farms in Romania with a combined capacity of 600 megawatts, the company said on Wednesday.

The state-controlled energy firm said that it bought assets a day earlier to build the Fantanele and Cogealac farms from the wind power developer Continental Wind Partners LLC.

CEZ did not disclose the purchase price but said it plans to invest a total of 1.1 billion euros (1.6 billion dollars) in the farms, the planned capacity of which is nearly triple the size of the Europe's largest operational wind farm of Maranchon in Guadalajara, Spain.

Prague - Czechs and Slovaks on Thursday commemorated 40 years since Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring communist reform movement, which threatened Moscow's Cold War grip on eastern Europe.

Warsaw Pact troops invaded what was then Czechoslavkia in the early hours of August 21, 1968, taking control of the country and arresting the reformist leaders. Western nations denounced the crackdown but made no military move to stop it.

In the run-up to the emotional anniversary, Czech leaders and European commentators have drawn comparisons between 1968 and Russia's invasion of Georgia. So did US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A new lap record was set up by the world champion Casey Stoner and took pole position for Sunday US MotoGP at the Laguna Seca circuit.  

The Ducati rider who set the time one minute 20.700 seconds is looking for his fourth successive win of the season. The lap record is two seconds faster than was set by him last year.

Honda’s Nicky Harden completed the first row of the grid though Yamaha's Valentino Rossi was the second quickest and was slower by 0.447s.                                                    

In California circuit, Britain’s James Toseland appeared in fifth position at the time of 1:21:848s.

Prague  - A Polish woman, a Ukrainian man and three Czechs were among the seven victims of Friday's train accident in eastern Czech Republic, the worst in 13 years, police said Saturday.

Revising its earlier reports, police said that four young women and two men, one young and one middle-aged, died when a speeding international train with some 400 passengers onboard rammed into a collapsed bridge in the north-eastern town of Studenka.

Prague - The Czech Republic's unemployment rate was down to 4.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, the lowest in more than 11 years, according to government data released Friday.

The April-June reading, which was based on EU-wide International Labour Organization (ILO) methodology, was down by 1.1 points year- on-year and well bellow the three-month eurozone average of slightly above 7.2 per cent, the Czech Statistical Office said.

The fast-growing Czech economy has been troubled by labour shortages following an influx in recent years of foreign investors, mostly car and electronics makers, to the ex-communist Central European state of 10 million.