Press Review | All stories

Today we have a wide variety of headlines but the one story that dominates all of Wednesday's papers is the two-day conference of NATO foreign ministers in Reykjavik, Iceland where the alliance has decided to create a new NATO- Russian council. Mlada fronta Dnes has a picture of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell giving his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, a friendly hug.

The story which gets the most space on Tuesday's front pages is the police anti-corruption unit's investigation of Czech Television director Jiri Balvin, who is accused of dubious dealings. Mlada fronta Dnes however leads with a story about the right-wing Civic Democrats, who a month ahead of general elections have promised to limit the number of asylum seekers and deport illegal immigrants.

The words "Sme majstri" feature prominently on the front page of Lidove noviny today - "Sme majstri" is Slovak for "We are the champions", and champions they are: Slovakia won the ice hockey World Championships on Saturday, for the first time since Czechoslovakia split into two a decade ago. All the papers carry photos of the team returning to a hero's welcome in the Slovak capital Bratislava.

You can take your pick from a number of topics making the front pages of today's Czech dailies, although it has to be said that the main story in the headlines this Friday is yesterday's passing of a government bill in the lower house approving the financing for 24 new Gripen fighter jets. The bill passed by just three votes on Thursday in a decision which went 98 for and 95 against.

All the Czech newspapers today feature photos of disappointed Czech ice hockey players, who were knocked out of the world championships in Sweden after losing to Russia. The team's captain Jaromir Jagr is featured in most of them, with sadness in his eyes.

The assassination of Holland's ultra-right politician Pim Fortuyn is splashed across most of Tuesday's front pages. "Holland's 'Le Pen' shot dead" says the lead headline in today's Lidove noviny. "The Dutch shocked by politician's murder" says Mlada fronta Dnes. " Don't shoot politicians - murders can't stop extremism" reads the heading of an editorial column in the same daily, in which Vilem Buchert notes that the murder of an extremist politician can only benefit extremists.

All the Czech newspapers today carry reports on their front pages about the victory of president Jacques Chirac in Sunday's presidential election in France, and feature photos of the winning president and cheering crowds in Paris.

In today's papers you can take your pick from either Yasser Arafat, shown in Pravo as free to travel for the first time in a month from his base in Ramallah, or David Rath the president of the Czech Doctor's Association whose battle in defence of compulsory membership of doctor's associations has made him a subject of focus all week - he's photographed in Lidove noviny.

A commentator in Mlada fronta Dnes describes May 1st as a day of poets, politicians and revolutionaries and Thursday's front pages reflect this somewhat bizarre definition. Pravo carries a snapshot of a lovers' kiss under an apple tree in bloom and one of anarchists clashing with police in the city of Brno. Lidove noviny shows MP Petra Buzkova at one of the Social Democrats' open air rallies on May Day, and Mlada fronta Dnes has a snapshot of Milous Jakes, the last Communist party boss who ruled Czechoslovakia before the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

Tuesday's front pages feature a variety of domestic and international stories -from the government's decision to postpone the sale of its stake in Cesky Telecom to the deserted classroom in the Bosnian town of Vlasenica where a teenage student attacked his teachers with a gun, only three days after the tragic shooting in the German town of Erfurt.