Press Review | All stories

There were no papers on Monday due to the public holiday, and so today's dailies report on Saturday's grisly end to the Moscow hostage crisis. Meanwhile the gale force winds which battered the Czech Republic at the weekend also make headlines today, as well as the first round of the Senate elections, in which only 24 percent of the electorate bothered to vote.

Details of the Russian hostage crisis fill the front pages of all the papers. There are snapshots of two medics carrying out the body of the first victim - whose fingers had reportedly been broken - and shocking eyewitness reports from people who were freed or managed to escape from the theatre. "We are scared to death. These people mean business. Please don't do anything rash" is one of the SMS messages which one of the hostages reportedly sent in the first hours of the crisis.

The Moscow theatre hostage crisis dominates all the dailies today - news that Chechen rebels are holding hundreds of theatregoers in Moscow's Palace of Culture is splashed across the front pages, accompanied by photos of Russian security forces arriving outside the building.

Wednesday's Czech papers carry a mixed bag of stories, though a good deal of attention has been given to the question of the pension Vaclav Havel will receive when he retires as president at the end of January. PRAVO reports that Justice Minister Pavel Rychetsky has proposed a pension package that amounts to over 210 thousand crowns a month, the equivalent of almost 7,000 US dollars.

One of the main items making headlines is the consensus reached by the Czech coalition government in preparing its state budget proposal for 2003 - all the papers report on negotiations involved within the coalition to settle on a proposed yearly deficit acceptable for all its MPs, especially Hana Marvanova, whose voice is crucial for a slim government majority in parliament. Under pressure by Ms Marvanova an initial deficit proposal of over 150 billion crowns, was renegotiated to a lower number of 111.3. Ms Marvanova has also stipulated written

"The Irish have given the green light to enlargement", "The Irish have opened the door to the EU" - these and similar headlines dominate today's front pages. Nearly all the papers also feature photos of a group of young Irish EU enthusiasts waving the European Union flag.

Choosing a successor to President Vaclav Havel continues to make headlines today. All the papers report on a new opinion poll showing that the vast majority of people - 85 percent to be exact - want to choose their president themselves, rather than let parliament decide for them. The idea was recently revived by the right-of-centre Civic Democrats - who originally rejected it - as the only way to get party leader Vaclav Klaus installed at Prague Castle.

There is a mixture of different stories and photos featured on the front pages of today's newspapers, ranging from one showing a burning fast train in east Bohemia to another featuring enthusiastic voters of Saddam Hussain during Tuesday's referendum in Iraq. But it's mostly domestic stories that prevail in the Czech press today.

Various forms of international terrorism have become a fixture on the front pages of most Czech dailies - and today is no exception. The papers report on the foiled hijack of a civilian airliner bound for Jeddah, there is an eyewitness account of the explosions on Bali by a young Czech tourist who escaped with only light injuries and there is much speculation surrounding the identity of the serial killer on the lose in and around Washington.

All of Tuesday's papers carry photos from the Indonesian island of Bali, which became a terrorist target last Saturday. LIDOVE NOVINY, PRAVO and HOSPODARSKE NOVINY lead with articles about the tragedy, for which the Indonesian government and the United States blames the Al-Quaeda network.