Summary of newspapers of the previous day – 15.09. 2008

Coal depreciation for limits is not warranted

Nor an optimism with which the Minister of Environment Martin Bursík presented government´s agreement with a proposal of amendment of upper law should not calm inhabitants of north-Bohemian municipalities Horní Jiřetín and Černice. People under whose houses reserves of brown coal for hundreds of billion crowns lie by far do not have certainty that mining companies will stop striving after their land. The novel slightly strengthens competence of the state over the mining companies; it knowhow changes the procedure in coal reserves depreciation. It only introduces a year time-limit within which a mining company have to deliver all relevant documentation. And if it does not make it, there is a threat of a fine of as much as 20 million crowns.

Billions are stolen in state forests. Conscienceless

The state could have fivefold profit from its forests this year – if there were not so many thefts and cheats in sale of woods in the state enterprise Lesy ČR. At least an analysis which the own management of Lesy have ordered last year asserts. “This year we suppose a gross profit about a half billion crowns”, the current chief of the enterprise Jiří Novák says. An audit ordered by the former management reckons year losses owing to cheat with woods to two to three billions.

How prions change owner

Scientists want to prevent a repetition of situation in 1995 when first cases of so called new variation of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease were described in the Great Britain. This killing and incurable brain disease affects those who has eaten beef meat from cattle suffering from so called disease of mad cows. The causer of the disease is proteinous element called prion. Beef prion causes in human body as a matrixes according to which a harmless human protein changes in human prions.

Czech Monika has started to conquer potato Europe

Czech potato-growers celebrate a new breeding success. A family of promulgated and appreciated varieties Keřkovské rohlíčky and Valfi which were allowed to experts from the Research Potato Institute in Havlíčkův Brod several years ago was completed just in these days by Monika. The variety of very early potatoes has been cultivated recently by keen breeders in Vesa Velhartice – a company which has its special workplace also in Česká Bělá in the region Havlíčkův Brod.