Press Review

Wild weather makes the front pages today - all the papers report on the threat of severe flooding, as rivers become swollen after several days of rain. Meanwhile blizzards in mountainous areas of the country are also causing problems for police and drivers alike.

Prague could also experience severe traffic problems on Monday, but completely unrelated to natural causes. As LIDOVE NOVINY reports, the city's tram drivers have announced a half-day strike in protest against low wages. They say they'll only call off the strike if their wages are increased to the same level as bus drivers, who are paid approximately 10 crowns - or 30 U.S. cents - more per hour.

"Nowhere else in Europe are drivers divided into separate categories of bus driver, tram driver, trolleybus driver or metro driver," says tram driver leader Antonin Dub. "They're simply defined as drivers of public transport vehicles, and they're all paid the same." The management of Prague Public Transport, says LIDOVE NOVINY, accuse the drivers of blackmailing them into submission.

Meanwhile just across the border in Austria, a group of environmental activists have gone on hunger strike in protest at the Czech Republic's Temelin nuclear power plant. LIDOVE NOVINY reports that eight people, most of whom are members of Austria's Stop Temelin initiative, will spend the next five days in a caravan in the town of Freistadt, with just a few flasks of tea to sustain them.

The activists say they want to use the hunger strike to rouse the Austrian government to take action over Temelin. "Our government is completely ignoring the justified fears of the majority of Austrians towards a nuclear power station which poses a direct threat to their health and safety," one of the hunger strikers told the paper.

MLADA FRONTA DNES details a hair-raising case of police incompetence and judicial wrongdoing. Imagine the following: You are a serious music fan. You have been buying records and CDs for more than 20 years. You now have a collection of around 20,000. One day, someone calls the police, claiming your extensive music collection is in fact a warehouse of pirated CDs. You and your wife are arrested and thrown into prison awaiting trial. You spend the next three months behind bars.

This is exactly what happened to Svatopluk Schwarzer and his wife, from the town of Karvina in North Moravia, writes MLADA FRONTA DNES. The couple were arrested in November 2000 and taken into custody. It took the police until February to ascertain that not one of the 20,000 records and CDs was pirated. It took another six months for police to halt proceedings against the couple. And another year before police returned the couple's music collection. Mr Schwarzer is now taking the police to court. And incidentally - they never even issued an apology.

Finally, police are examining a curious double-suicide case in the Svitavy area of North Moravia, writes PRAVO. Police were alerted after a man walking through local woods stumbled across the naked bodies of two men, lying at the foot of a rocky outcrop. The men were identified as mentally-disabled twin brothers. Police believe the 29-year-old brothers killed themselves in despair over their condition.