Press Review
President Klaus's trip to Sweden is featured heavily in the dailies today - MLADA FRONTA DNES shows the president standing side by side with Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustav at the royal palace in Stockholm. All the papers feature coverage of the Czech president's address to the Swedish parliament, in which he laid into the single European currency.
Mr Klaus was in fighting form in the Swedish capital, says PRAVO, especially when told by the head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee that Czechs were "good pupils in Europe." "We're not pupils," Mr Klaus shot back. He said Czechs were grown-up, free-willed people living in a normal country, and compared forthcoming EU membership to a wedding between two partners who've already been living together for some time.
MLADA FRONTA DNES warns that a wave of flu epidemics could hit the Czech Republic over Christmas. "They'll be no snow, but there will be flu," says the paper, adding that Czech hygiene officials are worried that the wave of flu currently rampaging through Western Europe will hit the country either at Christmas or shortly afterwards.
The paper also reports on the theft of four precious pieces of Czech Art Deco jewellery from an exhibition in Antwerp. The pieces - on loan from Prague's Museum of Decorative Arts - were stolen on Sunday, says MLADA FRONTA DNES, and police believe it was the work of professionals. Two thieves reportedly entered as visitors, smashed display cases and ran away with two broaches, a set of earrings and a necklace worth 1 million euros.
LIDOVE NOVINY reports on a demonstration by hundreds of university students and teachers outside a cabinet meeting in the Moravian city of Olomouc on Tuesday. They were there to express their anger against cutbacks and what they said was the government's refusal to resolve long-standing problems in higher education. One organiser said Tuesday's march was the largest student demo since 1989. Today the students march on Prague, says LIDOVE NOVINY.
The paper also has extensive coverage of someone nicknamed "the Chicken Hitler" - a.k.a. Anton Pohlmann, a notorious battery farm operator who's set up shop in the Czech Republic. LIDOVE NOVINY says Mr Pohlmann's new chicken farm in West Bohemia will produce 63 million eggs a year. Anton Pohlmann's notorious farms have earned him fines in the U.S. and even a suspended sentence in Germany. His reputation is so bad, writes LIDOVE NOVINY, that plans to expand into Hungary have even been opposed by the country's president Arpad Goncz.
And finally back to MLADA FRONTA DNES and the paper's Prague section. Two unsuspecting tourists were ripped off by a bus driver riding the 119 route to the airport. The two wanted to buy a pair of 12 crown tickets from the driver, but only had a 2,000 crown note to buy them with. The driver said he had no change, refused to give them tickets, and kept the money. "I'm not a bank," he said, according to the eyewitness who later filed a complaint.
