Press Review | All stories

Although more than a week has passed since the worst floods in the country's history, Monday's papers still carry plenty of bad news. Pravo, which occasionally does some investigative reporting, writes that according to available information hundreds of lives were put at risk because the Prague subway closed down 35 hours later than emergency regulations require.

Another flood-damaged edition of Press Review today - all the papers continue to report on the clean-up operation underway in the Czech Republic, as well as news of more floods elsewhere in the world - both Lidove noviny and Mlada fronta Dnes feature identical colour photos of German volunteers basking in the sun on a pile of sandbags, waiting for the wave of water to hit the city of Hamburg. Meanwhile, China is bracing itself for a flood of truly biblical proportions, with up to a million people being evacuated from the swollen Lake Dongting.

The floods in Central Europe remain the dominant topic in every Czech paper.

Most of today's headlines focus on the damage caused by last week's floods. All the papers carry photographs of the Spolana chemical factory which leaked out dangerous chlorine gas last week, although Lidove noviny's picture accidentally shows a coal-burning power station instead of the Spolana plant.

The demise of Gaston the seal came too late for today's papers, although they are full of references to his recapture after five days on the run. Mlada fronta Dnes even features a cartoon showing a policeman standing waist-deep in water, directing traffic with a baton. The "traffic" consists of four fish and a seal, presumably Gaston. A sign behind the policeman reads "No Entry for Sharks".

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and the many, many photos in Monday's dailies recording the damage caused by the recent floods certainly prove that saying. Collapsed buildings, clean-up work, exhausted rescue workers, distraught flood victims, town signs almost completely submerged; so many photographs tell the same tragic story - the Czech Republic has been utterly devastated by the events of the last ten days.

Stories on floods continue to fill up all of Friday's papers. The headlines today focus on Usti nad Labem and other towns in the North Bohemia region where the swollen water arrived after sweeping through Prague.

Floods continue to make the headlines in all of Thursday's papers where little else is discussed. Besides the devastating effects of floodwaters shown in spectacular photographs - including some incredible aerial photos - the papers warn that it's not over yet. Floodwaters are now heading to North Bohemia.

All of Wednesday's papers are full of reports on the devastating floods that hit South Bohemia last week and are now sweeping through the Prague region as well as West and North Bohemia. The situation is truly dramatic and the papers write about little else.

Unsurprisingly, all of Tuesday's papers are full of photographs and stories on the devastating floods that have swept across the Czech Republic as well as some other parts of Central Europe. The only other event that the papers cover extensively is the death of the famous poet and collage artist Jiri Kolar, who died on Sunday at the age of 88.