Press Review

Friday's front pages are dominated by yesterday's decision by Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla to sack Trade and Industry Minister Jiri Rusnok. Other topics making the headlines are the anonymous blackmailer who has been threatening to plant bombs in public places unless he is given 10 million crowns and the increase in the average salary, which now stands at almost 16,000 crowns.

PRAVO carries an interview with the sacked minister who says the prospect of staying in high politics does not appeal to him at the moment although he says he will not make any hasty decisions. For the moment Mr Rusnok remains an MP for the Social Democrats. The ex-minister says the reason for his dismissal was that he voted for the Civic Democrat candidate Vaclav Klaus in the presidential election two weeks ago. "It was a tough decision, but I stick by it," Mr Rusnok told PRAVO.

The paper also reports on the anonymous bomber who has caused alarm in the Olomouc region. After receiving a letter saying there was a bomb under one of the city's bridges, police discovered a functioning explosive on a railway bridge on Wednesday. At the same time they received another letter from the blackmailer who threatens to keep on planting bombs and has demanded a large amount of money from the state.

MLADA FRONTA DNES adds that the police's organised crime unit is investigating the case. Although the bomb was made of readily available materials - a metal pipe and nails - police say the culprit clearly had some experience. In his letter, the blackmailer set a deadline by which the amount of 10 million crowns must be delivered at a certain place, otherwise he will plant other bombs and this time set them off, MLADA FRONTA DNES quotes from the letter.

LIDOVE NOVINY writes that in 2002 the average monthly salary was 15,707 crowns, which is 7.3 percent more than in 2001. Civil servants earned by 1,314 crowns more every month than in the previous year. People employed in the private sector were only by 1,011 crowns a month better off than in 2001. LIDOVE NOVINY quotes financial analysts as saying the average growth of real incomes exceeds labour productivity growth - a phenomenon which could increase unemployment even further than the current record-high 10.2 percent.

MLADA FRONTA DNES reports that according to the latest polls carried out by the TNS Factum agency, the opposition Civic Democratic Party would get 34.4 percent of votes if elections were to be held now. The Communist Party would get 22.3 percent of votes and only 22.2 percent of voters would support the Social Democrats, who lead the governing coalition. The poll suggests the Communists' support has increased by 3.5 percent since January, while the percentage of people who would vote for the Social Democrats has been declining steadily since October, when they enjoyed almost 30 percent support.

The Prague supplement of MLADA FRONTA DNES reports that on Wednesday ten people were knocked down by cars in the Czech capital. Luckily, no one was killed in the accidents. A spokesman for the ambulance service says that the number of people hit by cars in Prague on one day usually does not exceed two and that Wednesday's string of accidents was only a sad coincidence. MLADA FRONTS DNES quotes a psychologist as saying that drivers in this country are becoming more and more aggressive and that their bad driving habits might partly be a compensation for their unsatisfactory sex lives.