Press Review | All stories

All of the country's papers are dominated by the same three headlines: two separate suicides cases when students set themselves on fire, the ongoing war in Iraq, and the parliament's decision to dismiss the council for radio and television broadcasting. Pravo chooses the dramatic option with a graphic picture of one student's body on its front page.

Several domestic stories vie for attention on today's front pages, most of which still focus on the ongoing war with Iraq. The Foreign Ministry's SARS warning -urging Czechs not to travel to south east Asia - has received considerable attention as has the interior and defense ministers claim that they are being spied upon by the country's intelligence service.

Iraq continues to dominate the front pages of today's papers, which look into the latest developments in the war, including the sacking of a US reporter who told Iraqi television that the United States' military plan had failed. On the domestic front, it is the Czech government's decision to terminate its contract with the Israeli firm Housing & Construction to build a new motorway that's making the headlines. The leading political story in several papers speculates on the future of Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Vladimir Spidla.

"Lightning strike runs into problems", "Allied offensive slows down": those are two headlines in today's dailies that sum up recent developments in the US-led war against Iraq, with the papers offering the same front-page photo of refugees fleeing Iraq's southern city of Basra. Here in the Czech Republic the top story is Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla's lean victory at his party's convention over the weekend - Mr Spidla was able to retain his Social Democrat chairmanship in spite of inner-party criticism to his leadership and a fair challenge from former

The war in Iraq continues to dominate front pages and the papers note that what was supposed to be a short and sharp conflict may now drag on for months. President Bush has asked congress for war funds which would last for at least six months, Lidove Noviny says.

The war in Iraq continues to dominate all the papers today, leaving little space to domestic news. Remarks on the recently released list of former communist secret police collaborators, an analysis of what's to come in the upcoming party congress of the Social Democrats, and the country's anti-chemical unit in Kuwait are the main Czech stories.

One of the numerous articles in Wednesday's dailies on the war against Iraq concerns, as the headline puts it, how Defence Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik is "selling" the war. Parts of his daily meetings with the press, says MLADA FRONTA DNES, resemble a carefully planned show.

Again today, the dailies concentrate primarily on the war in Iraq. Photos of soldiers in action, Saddam Hussein delivering a speech on TV and the US Apache helicopter that was downed southwest of Baghdad, dominate the front pages. LIDOVE NOVINY writes that Iraqi television reported the helicopter was shot down by an Iraqi farmer who used a gun manufactured in the Brno arms factory in the former Czechoslovakia.

Unsurprisingly, today's front pages are dominated by photos of allied soldiers in action in Iraq, firing missiles or watching bomb blasts over Iraqi cities in the distance. Headlines in most papers inform readers that Iraq has been putting up unexpected resistance, only MLADA FRONTA DNES is optimistic, saying that "the Americans are approaching Baghdad".

All of Friday's newspapers are, as you might expect, dominated by the war in Iraq, with most front pages featuring photos of Baghdad under fire from American bombs. Given the dailies' deadlines and the fact that events are moving so quickly, it is no surprise that they all heavily advertise their Internet news sites on their front pages.