A nurse has confessed to killing seven of his patients and attempting to murder 10 more by injecting them with a blood-thinning drug, police said Dec. 3. The 30-year-old man, whose identity was not released, worked in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in Havličkův Brod, east Bohemia. The motive of the killings was not euthanasia, police said.

NUCLEAR

Austrian critics of the Czech nuclear facility Temelí­n will file a suit at the European Court of Justice in the coming weeks, Austrian media reported Dec. 2. Activists also blockaded border checkpoint for six hours Dec. 3. The Temelí­n plant in south Bohemia, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Austrian border, has been plagued by technical troubles and is a frequent target of Czech, Austrian and German anti-nuclear protests.

DRINK

The Czech Republic ranked second in Europe in alcohol consumption in 2005, behind only Luxembourg, media reported Dec. 2. According to Czech Statistical Office data, per-capita consumption was 7.8 liters (8.27 quarts) of liquor, 16.8 liters of wine and 163.5 liters of beer. Czechs are still the highest per-capita consumers of beer in the world, the reports said.

BLAME

Social Democratic (ČSSD) head Jiří­ Paroubek blamed former party Chairman Miloš Zeman for the ČSSD's loss of public support last month, according to a Dec. 4 report on news server Novinky. Paroubek said voters dislike quarreling within parties and that Zeman shouldn't have publicly criticized the current ČSSD leadership.

LEFT OUT