Cucumber season

Summer holidays have just started, but the Czech silly season is already in full swing. Not that there is nothing to write about: There is the Pačes report on the prospects of Czech energy industry, which, according to the government, is giving ČEZ a green light to build another nuclear power station at Temelín. There is a terrorist attack against the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 41. But neither ČEZ nor terrorists seem to be eye-catching any more.

In Slovenia, 13 local politicians drowned in a newly-built dam lake on the Sava; David Hladík from Zlechov has been charged with severing his pal's head and walking it around the village in a plastic bag. A six-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother were abused in Beroun. A 70-year-old Indian granny has given birth to healthy twins, and Condoleezza Rice is arriving in Prague. She is to sign the radar deal and protests are expected.

There is definitely no shortage of stories (to say nothing of the weather), but none of them obviously meets the ideal of a real summer hit. And so the front page of Lidové noviny on Monday reported on the wax figure of Adolf Hitler, whose head was torn off by an enraged visitor in Berlin's Madame Tussauds; Mladá fronta Dnes remembered the old and lonely and ran a moving reportage from a long-term care hospital unit. In order to penetrate the secrets of the medical circles, the paper even risked the mental health of…