Press Review

Divisions over the looming war in Iraq make the headlines in several of Tuesday's Czech dailies, as does Saturday's tragic coach crash in south Bohemia. MLADA FRONTA DNES carries a poignant photo of a floral shrine to three young sisters who were among the 19 dead. Surrounded by flowers, a framed photo shows smiling sisters Marketa, Petra and Stepanka.

Another recent tragedy is featured in the paper's Prague section: tourists have been visiting the spot on Wenceslas Square where student Zdenek Adamec burned himself to death last week. People are coming to pay their respects, to offer their opinions on the young man's suicide and also out of curiosity, says the daily.

A tour guide says foreign tourists cannot be blamed for wanting to visit the site. After all, she tells MLADA FRONTA DNES, the incident was covered in the world's media. A soldier guarding the nearby Radio Free Europe building concurs, saying people are always attracted to tragedy, and the curious should not be criticised.

A European Commission report says too many Czechs - almost 40 percent - work in industry, according to HOSPODARSKE NOVINY. No other country set to join the European Union next May has so many workers in the industrial sector and the only option for many will be retraining for the service sector, says the daily.

Recent allegations by senior Civic Democrats that their mobile phones were tapped are back in the headlines in MLADA FRONTA DNES. While police say no such crime occurred and blame technical error, the MPs in question are refusing to let the 'case' lie. The mobile operator Eurotel has made us look like idiots, MP Jan Klas has said, while his colleague Vlastimil Tlusty is planning to sue the company. The north Moravian city of Ostrava, known for coal-mining, is the scene of a dispute about who first discovered coal in the area, writes LIDOVE NOVINY. For decades children have been taught it was a blacksmith named Jan Kelticka. However, doubts have been raised as to whether it was Mr Kelticka who discovered the material which led to a boom in Ostrava at the turn of the 19th century.

Some say a miller named Jan Augustin first discovered coal in the area in 1763. Nonsense says local man Svatopluk Chodura, who maintains the Jan Kelticka museum. He tells the daily that Augustin went bankrupt several times and was nothing but a con-man.