Press Review
All kinds of different stories make the headlines today: Pravo 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, Hospodarske Noviny 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.
On the home scene it is no surprise that attention is paid to the 35th anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, though only Lidove Noviny features the events of 1968 on its cover: a burning Soviet tank on Prague's Vinohradska Street in front of Czechoslovak Radio. The paper looks not only back on the events, but at the present, reporting on a poll just released on Russian attitudes to the historic invasion.
How do some Russian soldiers deployed in '68 view those August days? Lidove Noviny offers some of their testimonies. A common recollection is that soldiers were told by their superiors they were coming to the Czechs' aid to defeat capitalism, at the Czechs' request. But, Russian soldiers soon discovered, they weren't wanted here at all.
Moving on to more immediate worries now, worries that plagued Czech farmers all summer. They believed they would be terribly hit financially after what, for them, was an unbearably dry season. Previously the Agrarian Chamber warned that as much as one third of all Czech farmers could either go bankrupt or lose their jobs with other companies after the end of the season. But, Hospodarske Noviny now writes, things have turned out quite differently.
According to the paper the wheat and grain harvest is just about wrapped up, and losses are not nearly as high as previously expected: for example just thirteen percent in wheat. One analyst quoted in Hospodarske Noviny says that worse results would have led to some bankruptcies, but stresses that in most cases these would have been companies in long-term financial straits. At the moment it is unclear whether the somewhat poorer results will have a negative impact.
The lucky winner will now have to come forward with only his obcansky prukaz - or identity card - and the filled-in ticket of course, in order to walk off with as much as 500, 000 in cash, the rest will be sent to an account. Mlada Fronta Dnes notes that in all likeliness the winner will choose to remain anonymous - that's the way it usually goes. After all, if you won that much, would you go tell the world? Or just drive quietly to work the next day in an unassuming, unglamorous Porsche...
