Prague - Coach Petr Rada was sacked and six players banned on Wednesday by the Czech Republic football association, a week after the team lost a key World Cup qualifier to Slovakia.

The association fired Rada, 50, over disappointing results during team's World Cup qualifying campaign, with last week's 2-1 home defeat against Slovakia the final nail in the coffin.

The players were banned for disciplinary reasons over a restaurant visit after the lost game on April 1 which was slammed by the country's tabloids and football officials.

Prague  - Twenty six people were injured, including two children who were seriously hurt, in a radio money competition stampede in southern Czech Republic, officials said Wednesday.

A crowd trampled on them while scrambling for 100,000 koruny (5,000 dollars) in vouchers, each worth 50 koruny, which a local radio station was handing out at random Tuesday in a show held on a public square in Ceske Budejovice.

The local hospital treated 26 onlookers, including seven children, spokesman Jan Dusek told German News Agency dpa.

Prague - The Czech Republic's unemployment rate continued to climb in March, showing that a drop in demand was pulling down the export-reliant economy, according to government data released Wednesday.

The unemployment rate, based on the number of jobseekers registered with state labour authorities, which rose to 7.7 per cent in March, up from 7.4 per cent in the previous month, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs said.

In March, authorities registered 448,912 unemployed people, an increase of 20,064 compared to late February.

Prague  - Two Czech teenagers were identified Tuesday among the victims of the powerful earthquake that struck central Italy, Czech officials said.

The dead were two 17-year-old students, a boy and a girl, from the eastern Bohemian town of Pardubice who were in Italy on a short-term study programme, the Czech Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Their remains were found in the rubble of the building where they were staying, the ministry said.

Prague - The fate of Czech Republic's interim government, due to take the helm of the European Union and bring the country to October early elections, appeared uncertain Tuesday after two small parties refused to participate.

Two junior partners in Mirek Topolanek's outgoing ruling coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Greens, balked late Monday at a deal their leaders forged with the two biggest parties and bitter rivals, Topolanek's Civic Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats led by Jiri Paroubek.

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Monday that he is happy with a deal among rival political parties on a caretaker government led by statistician Jan Fischer that would complete the Czech Republic's presidency of the European Union ending June 30.

Klaus, who is to appoint the next premier, said in a Radio Cesko interview that he is "in principle" satisfied with the deal on the interim technocrat cabinet that would take the country to early elections before October 15.