Press Review | All stories

Two domestic stories dominate today's front pages - the teachers strike, which Lidove Noviny describes as the biggest teachers' protest in the country's history, and the death of the former culture minister, writer and journalist Pavel Tigrid in Paris.

A mixed bag in the papers today: most mention news that the "Sumperk railway blackmailer" is in police custody after being arrested in a phone booth - he was calling the daily with a fresh ransom demand when he was nabbed by police. Also making headlines today: Education Minister Petra Buzkova's failed attempt to avert strike action by teachers on Monday - the first day of the school year.

There are a wide variety of stories making the headlines in Thursday's dailies, though most carry front page photos of Mars, which is at its closest to the earth for 60,000 years. Pravo and Lidove Noviny have what appears to be the same photo, except in Pravo Mars is orange coloured and in Lidove Noviny it's red. The face of athletics star Roman Sebrle is also splashed across the dailies, after he came second in the decathlon at the World Athletics Championships in Paris.

The first ever trial of a left-wing radical commands a great deal of attention since a regional court in North Moravia is now expected to set an important precedent - can people be jailed for propagating communism?

All the main dailies today lead with reports of heightening tensions between the government and the trade unions nation-wide over the planed fiscal reforms. On the international front, the papers carry shocking photos from the Indian port city of Bombay, which was hit by two huge bomb blasts.

Today's papers make rather depressing reading - with little else happening, the grim road death statistics get front page coverage in Mlada Fronta Dnes. Lidove Noviny meanwhile leads with news that the investigation into the "robbery of the century" has collapsed through lack of forensic evidence, while Pravo claims that the Russian mafia is slowly but surely infiltrating the Czech authorities.

There's only one star of today's Press Review, and that is of course the Japanese robot Asimo. Yes, robot fever has hit the Czech Republic this week, and the papers are full of him. Asimo shaking hands with Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, Asimo standing proudly by the side of Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi, Asimo declaring a toast of friendship between robots and humans: could this be the most successful official visit ever to the Czech Republic?

All kinds of different stories make the headlines today: shows an uncompromising Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General, responding strongly to Tuesday apparent suicide attack in Baghdad that killed at least twenty-four and injured over a hundred. Meanwhile, highlights the return of weather-worn German tourists, kidnapped and held for five months by Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria. Reportedly 4.6 million euros were paid out to ensure their safe release.

The carnage caused by Wednesday's bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad is splashed across all the front pages. The papers carry eyewitness accounts of the massacre including a report from the senior Czech envoy to Iraq, who says she lost a close friend in the blast.

The lottery fever gripping the nation makes headlines today, as does news that teachers might strike for just one day instead of three, or perhaps not strike at all. Also on the front pages today, two high-profile murder cases - the killing of a priest by a seemingly unrepentant 29-year-old, and news that a young married couple from Kutna Hora have admitted to murdering eight elderly people for their money - the worst case of serial murder in Czech criminal history.