Press Review | All stories

The major international stories covered by the Czech newspapers today are the parliamentary elections in France and the nightmarish Sunday in Moscow, where football fans demolished shop windows and burned cars after Russia's football team lost to Japan in the World Cup. The domestic pages are dominated by reports and analyses of Sunday's TV duel between the leaders of the two strongest political parties, Social Democrat Vladimir Spidla and Civic Democrat Vaclav Klaus.

Today's newspapers offer a fair mix from the international as well as the Czech domestic scene: while Pravo features a photo of a deeply shocked Yasser Arafat surveying his damaged bedroom in Ramallah after it was hit by a tank missile on Thursday; Lidove noviny features a photograph of former Prague mayor Jan Kasl joking with Czech President Vaclav Havel.

Echoes of September 11th continue to make the Czech papers today, and news that U.S. agents claim to know the identity of the man who actually planned the attacks. Pictures of Kuwaiti Khalid Sheik Muhammad grace the front pages of all today's dailies, next to pictures of President Vaclav Havel receiving German counterpart Johannes Rau, and the latest suicide bombing in Israel.

Most of the Czech newspapers today carry photos of Queen Elizabeth II amid cheering crowds in London during celebrations of her Golden Jubilee. Photos from the World Cup in South Korea and Japan also abound. But with just nine days to go before the general election in the Czech Republic, it's mostly political issues that prevail on the domestic pages.

No single headline dominates the papers today. Most of the country's main dailies feature Britain's celebrations of Queen Elizabeth's golden jubilee. On the home front, the forthcoming elections tussle with salaries to win most coverage.

The football World Cup in some way or other is present on the front pages of most Czech daily newspapers today. Mlada fronta Dnes carries a series of photos of football fans with different national flags painted on their faces.

Various stories make the covers of the Czech dailies today: Mlada fronta Dnes features a pretty picture of Czech Super model Eva Herzigova holding two babies as part of a planned charity event for Czech orphanages, while Hospodarske noviny features more sobering news that the world is witnessing massive rearmament in response to last year's September 11th attacks. In related news Thursday saw the last remaining pieces of the World Trade Centre removed in a special ceremony in New York, prompting cover photographs of heroic NYC fire-fighters in both Pravo and Lidove noviny.

The resignation of Prague's mayor Jan Kasl and his decision to leave the Civic Democratic Party is splashed across all of today's front pages as commentators speculate about how this bombshell could effect the outcome of the June general elections. "Klaus says: it's a new Sarajevo", reads the lead headline in Mlada fronta Dnes, a reference to the time when other Civic Democrat Party members broke ranks to establish a new party of their own, away from the domineering party leader Vaclav Klaus who was on a working trip to Sarajevo at the time.

There are three main stories that make the headlines in all the Czech newspapers today: the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council in Rome, Jan Kasl's resignation from his post of Mayor of Prague, and the victory of the Czech soccer team over France on Tuesday in the Under-21s European Championship Final.

The growing rift between the Prime Minister Milos Zeman and Foreign Minister Jan Kavan has become a front page topic and snapshots of the two men together clearly portray tense relations. The papers note that, more than ever, the two officials are pulling in different directions foreign policy wise, with the Prime Minister ploughing ahead regardless of the diplomatic consequences, leaving the Foreign Minister to make his own explanations to outraged foreign officials.