Press Review
Most of Friday's papers lead with the release of Vladimir Zelezny after two nights in custody - the TV mogul faces charges of attempting to cheat a creditor. Another subject widely covered is Saturday's 12th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
Lidove noviny's colour supplement carries a long interview with Czech Vladimir Remek, who was a cosmonaut under the Soviet space programme and still lives in Moscow. Remek says that while he is now better off materially than he was under communism, he regrets the loss of certainty which communism provided, and the fact that unprincipled individuals have gotten very rich at the expense of others.
Lidove noviny's colour supplement carries a long interview with Czech Vladimir Remek, who was a cosmonaut under the Soviet space programme and still lives in Moscow. Remek says that while he is now better off materially than he was under communism, he regrets the loss of certainty which communism provided, and the fact that unprincipled individuals have gotten very rich at the expense of others.
Pravo carries an interesting story about mummies - mummified people that is, not women who have had children. The mummies are preserved in the basement of a church in Klatovy, west Bohemia. Little could the Jesuits who placed the first body in the church's crypt in 1676 have imagined what fate had in store for the now-mummified bodies, says the daily.
The bodies - encased in glass-topped coffins - weren't embalmed but dried to their current state, and have been on display to the public since 1937. There are mummies in the crypts of some seventeen churches in the Czech Republic, but only those in Klatovy and Brno are on show, writes Pravo, adding that those in some other churches can be seen - but only by appointment.
Friday's dailies quote Czech football coach Josef Chovanec as saying he is still considering his future following his team's failure to get to next year's World Cup finals. Lidove noviny looks at potential successors to Chovanec - and reckons Ostrava coach Josef Jarabinsky is the best man for the job.
Hospodarske noviny meanwhile looks at the financial implications - the Czech Republic's failure to qualify has cost the country's football association a hundred million crowns, or over two and a half million US dollars. While Czech football fans may have been crying in their beer, bookmakers cleaned up, as most Czech fans bet on their team to win. Czech sports fans always bet with their hearts, a happy bookie told the daily.
And finally a subject featured in the press every year when the temperature starts to drop below zero - the homeless. The number of people living on the streets in the Czech Republic continues to rise - some estimates suggest there are 100,000 homeless people in the country, writes Hospodarske noviny. There are shelters but the number of places is quite inadequate. What's more, the state is doing nothing whatsoever to halt the trend, says the paper.
