Press Review | All stories

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's one-day visit to Prague makes the headlines in all of today's papers, with his picture splashed over most of the front pages. All agree that the most important part of Mr Blair's visit was his assertion that the Benes decrees would not hinder the Czech Republic from entering the EU.

The front pages of today's papers carry photos of a happy and tearful Miss Czech Republic who was crowned on Saturday. The eighteen-year old blonde Katerina Prusova from the north Bohemian village of Chrastava won the contest despite a small handicap - a plaster cast on her left forearm. Katerina broke her arm riding a motorcycle.

There are many different types of stories making headlines in Friday's papers, one of the most disturbing being the death of an American stuntman on the Vltava river yesterday. The stuntman died during filming of the feature film "Triple X" when his paraglider crashed into one of the columns of Prague's Palacky bridge. Pravo carries a photo from the site of the accident on its front page.

Snapshots of continuing violence in the Middle East contrast sharply with pictures of wedding bliss in a small Czech town where the country's most popular singer Lucie Bila married her boyfriend in what was meant to be a secret wedding. Snapshots of the bride and groom grace most of today's front pages, and the papers carry whatever scraps of information they could glean about the surprise ceremony.

All of Wednesday's papers carry photos of the ruins of the 16th century gothic wooden church in Ostrava which was burnt out in the early hours of Tuesday morning - it was one of the oldest wooden churches in the country. The reopening of the Waldstein gardens in Prague's Mala Strana district also gets photo coverage in all the papers, as does one shockingly fat black man - he is world sumo wrestling champion Emanuel Yarbrough from New York, who is in town for this weekend's Czech sumo championships. Pravo calls him the heaviest man in the world; his weight - 354 kilogrammes.

The tragic death of an entire family in the town of Louny dominates the front pages today - the six member Polish family were entombed in a pile of rubble after four storeys of a hotel collapsed on Easter Monday. Also making the papers today is the death of Britain's Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, better known as the Queen Mother, who died on Saturday at the age of 101.

One of the top stories in today's dailies is the sentencing of militant skinhead Frantisek Sobek to seven years in prison for an attack on group of civilians, which included a pregnant woman. Three of the major papers carry the skinhead's photograph, and Mlada fronta Dnes recalls shocking video footage aired on Czech TV, which showed the skinhead kicking a man curled up on the ground. The attack took place in Prague's much-frequented Wenceslas Square in 1999, during celebrations of a Czech ice hockey victory at the world championships.

Corruption features heavily on the front pages of today's dailies - Lidove noviny leads with news that police "agent provocateurs" are to be deployed to root out bribe-taking and other dishonest practices. And the papers also report that the British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be visiting the Czech Republic after all, following the cancellation several weeks ago of a trip planned for late March. The British prime minister will now visit Prague in early April.

We'll begin on a serious note today - because what can be more serious than winning a 110 million crown jackpot in the lottery? Who will be 100 million crowns richer this evening? A question which not only the papers but the entire nation can't wait to hear the answer to. Lottery fever has gripped the Czech Republic hard and the papers say that people who have never before filled in a lottery ticket have joined in the game, spurred on by the vision of astronomical winnings and how the money could change their lives.

The Czech newspapers don't have one big issue to report on today, but all the papers at the moment are already reflecting the fact that the general elections are in the offing. Hospodarske noviny writes that the three political parties that have received a large donation from the Ceska sporitelna bank are now pondering what to do with it. Ceska sporitelna, majority owned by Austria's Erste Bank, donated 2 and a half million crowns to the ruling Social Democrats, the opposition Civic Democrats and the Coalition.