Press Review | All stories

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.

Well it's just six weeks to the elections here in the Czech Republic and the papers reflect that - the press is full of rather tedious pre-election analysis and speculation. Pravo and Lidove noviny both lead with news that after years of ruling out the possibility, Vaclav Klaus - leader of the right-of-centre Civic Democrats - has finally conceded the possibility of a coalition with the Social Democrats. Meanwhile Mlada fronta Dnes, which supports Mr Klaus, relegates the story to page two...

Friday's front pages cover a variety of topics from the central bank's intervention against the strong crown, to the sentencing of the 'Package Murderer', a man who chopped up his girlfriend and posted her body parts to non-existent addresses.

There are plenty of high-profile stories jostling for attention on today's front pages . The papers report on the humiliation which France's ultra-right presidential candidate Jean Marie Le Pen suffered at the hands of European Parliament deputies in Brussels. Mlada fronta Dnes carries a snapshot of the world's second space tourist - twenty nine year old Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa, who will board the Russian spaceship Sojuz for a week long trip for which he forked out 20 million US dollars.