Prague- Czech President Vaclav Klaus Thursday pardoned a man who tried to sell a hip joint he claimed was the president's in an online auction.

The bones were offered for a minimum of 35,000 koruny (2,100 dollars) in late June, nearly a month after Klaus underwent hip replacement surgery.

The website quickly removed the offer by Premysl Donat, a 54-year- old trained lawyer, who also makes products for the blind.

Prague- Czech and US negotiators are likely to complete talks on
the second missile shield treaty in September, Czech Defence Minister
Vlasta Parkanova said Thursday.

Parkanova said she also expects the center-right cabinet of Prime
Minister Mirek Topolanek to discuss the so-called Status of Forces
Agreement later the same month.

The pact defines conditions for stationing US troops at a radar
base Washington wants to build as part of its planned missile defence
system in a military zone one hour's drive south-west of Prague.

The agreement complements a diplomatic deal signed in the Czech
capital by the top Czech and US diplomats, Karel Schwarzenberg and
Condoleezza Rice, in early July.

Prague  - New World Resources NV (NWR), the owner of the Czech Republic's largest coal mining company, said Thursday its net profit was up more than four times year-on-year in the second quarter of 2008 on the back of skyrocketing coal prices.

NWR more than quadrupled its second-quarter net profit from 16.2 million euros in 2007 to 71.3 million euros (105.3 million dollars) this year, according to unaudited consolidated results.

The mining company's consolidated revenues reached 513.1 million euros (757.5 million dollars) between April and June, up by 56.3 per cent from 328.2 million euros in the same period the previous year.

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.