Press Review | All stories

The photo of President Vaclav Havel shaking hands with the US President George W. Bush in front of a fireplace dominates all today's front pages. Mlada fronta Dnes as well as Lidove noviny dedicate a whole page to Mr Havel's visit to the United States which is his last foreign trip before his term ends in four month's time.

The resolution of the government crisis of course features on all the front pages today - a picture of a smiling Vladimir Spidla in Mlada fronta Dnes says it all. Lidove noviny shows President Vaclav Havel and his wife Dagmar boarding a plane for the United States - now, it seems, he won't have to worry about catching an emergency flight home, to try and put together a new government.

Domestic news dominate today's front pages with three big stories jostling for attention: the deepening government crisis, the biggest bank robbery in the country's history and two former communist top officials charged with treason for their part in the 1968 Soviet led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

All the Czech newspapers write on their front pages about the weekend's developments around the first government crisis in the Czech Republic after the June elections. Many of them ask if Hana Marvanova, an MP for the governmental Freedom Union party, was faithful to her own principles or simply naive to have voted against her own coalition in a move that triggered the crisis. Commentators agree, however, that it's the Communists who will profit from the current situation.

Without exception all of Friday's Czech papers feature George W. Bush on their covers at the U.N. yesterday, where the U.S. president addressed the continuing problem of Iraq and possible U.S. strikes. The American president warned the United Nations that it would have to bring Saddam Hussein to heel in compliance with U.N. resolutions if it wanted to avoid U.S. military action. Meanwhile, here in the Czech Republic this Friday perhaps the most dominant story concerns the truth behind the Prague metro: it has now been confirmed that the once infallible system did contain engineering flaws that allowed extensive parts of Prague's subway to flood last month.

Pictures from New York, remembering the 1st anniversary of the terrorist attacks, feature on the front pages of all the Czech newspapers today. But all of them also write about solemn acts held in the Czech Republic, the biggest of which was a mass at St. Vitus cathedral at Prague Castle, attended by leading Czech public figures, including President Vaclav Havel and his wife Dagmar, and the US ambassador in the Czech Republic Craig Stapleton.

All the Czech newspapers today remember the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 last year and carry photographs taken immediately after the attacks. Most of the dailies also carry the views of Czech politicians and economists, answering the question of how last September's events in the United States and the anti-terrorist campaign that followed influenced developments in the Czech Republic.

The collapse of the Austrian government and the upcoming first anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks against the United States dominate today's front pages. "Tax war erupts in the wake of floods" reads a headline in Mlada fronta Dnes. The paper notes that the floods have had a major impact on politics in this part of the world .

All today's papers dedicate a lot of space on their front pages to the package of flood reforms the government approved late on Sunday night. The meeting ended too late for the papers to include all details, but not many differences from the proposed version were expected anyway.

No single topic dominates the Czech papers today - although a particularly brutal photo on the cover of Pravo of men shot dead in the assassination attempt on Afghani president Hamid Karzai is certainly attention grabbing to say the least. But it's with the Czech reaction to a possible U.S.-led strike against Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein that we begin. The daily Mlada fronta Dnes writes that the Czech Republic would like the U.S. to avoid an attack on Iraq, or at least have any strike sanctioned by the U.N. first.