Malta and international press digest

The following are the top stories in the local and overseas press today:

The Times leads with the European Court hearing yesterday and says a decision on hunting this spring is expected within a few days. It also reports that the Prime Minister will join Nato leaders today when they discuss Malta's application to rejoin Partnership for Peace. It also says the AFM will take part in a naval exercise with several navies in the Mediterranean this month.

In-Nazzjon says a fire yesterday destroyed a warehouse in Sta Venera. It also reports the decisions taken by the PN executive on the seats being given up by candidates who were elected from two districts. Its third story is about a €1.2 million investment by the Eco Group, which produces energy saving equipment.

l-orizzont also leads with the Sta Venera fire but leads with a report that former minister Michael Frendo revealed the government's plans on links with Nato.

The Malta Independent says the European Court is expected to decide later this month on an interim measure on spring hunting.

The Press in Britain...

The Financial Times leads with Bertie Ahern's resignation as Ireland's Prime Minister after 'growing pressure over his private finances'. Investigators reportedly discovered cash payments of up to €100,000, which Ahern secretly received from businessmen in the 1990s. The 58-year-old, who has denied any wrongdoing, has led Ireland for 11 years

The Express says MPs, who have already been accused of lining their pockets at taxpayers' expense, have demanded a 35 percent pay rise.

The Daily Star and The Sun lead with the arrest of the stepfather of Shannon Matthews over child porn allegations.

The Guardian reports the race for the next Mayor of London couldn't be more dramatic: a poll for the newspaper shows Boris Johnson has a 'wafer thin' lead over Ken Livingstone.

The Times reveals that some faith schools are forcing parents to pay for places at some of the best state primaries and secondaries schoold. It says one Jewish school in London asked parents for £895 a term.

Calling faith schools "a law unto them selves", The Independent says the vast majority are illegaly excluding students.

The Daily Mail carries a chilling warning as banks axe cheap moprtages in record numbers: three million families could find themselves with negative equity within a year, due to the credit crunch.

In the same vein, The Telegraph leads with a report that reveals comsumer borrowing through credit cards, overdrafts and loans is growing at the fastest rate in five years.

The Scotsman reports that Donald Trump has walked into another row over plans to build a £1billion golf resort in Scotland as he boasted that this time, 'I'm going to get it'.

And elsewhere...

The ruling party of President Mugabe has lost control of Zimbabwe's parliament. The Standard quotes the country's election commission saying the combined opposition had taken at least 105 seats in the 210 seat parliament, with 94 for Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. Earlier, opposition Movement of Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai had declared himself the winner of the presidential election with 50.3 percent of the vote. But Zimbabwe's official government newspaper, The Herald, wrote that a run-off election would be required.

Aftonbladet quotes Turkey's prime minister saying his country would settle for nothing less than full membership of the European Union. During an official visit to Sweden, Tayyip Erdogan repeated his opposition to suggestions that Ankara should accept a privileged partnership with the 27-member bloc.

Warsaw's mass-circulation tabloid Super Express reports that the upper house of Poland's parliament has approved a bill allowing the president to ratify the new European Union treaty. The senators voted 74-17 to adopt the Lisbon Treaty, which streamlines how the 27-member bloc is run. Meanwhile, in Dublin, The Irish Times reports that the country is to go to the polls to vote on the treaty on Thursday June 12.

International Herald Tribune reveals that plans to include Ukraine and Georgia in the military alliance have been suspended. It quotes a NATO spokesman saying that the alliance also agreed to invite Croatia and Albania to join the alliance, but has postponed a decision on Macedonia. The entry bids for the two former soviet states, strongly backed by President Bush, met with opposition from some members, most notably Germany and France, because of fears of provoking Russia. Meanwhile as Bush stressed the threat of a resurgent Taliban in Afganistan, France ageed to send additional troops to the country's east.

Employees at the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung, once the mouthpiece for East Germany's communist regime, have agreed to allow their Stasi files to be scrutinized following admissions by two editors that they worked for the dreaded East German secret police. Privacy laws prohibit the publisher from carrying out an investigation. But 85 of the 89 journalists working for the paper voted in favour of asking the administrators of the Stasi archive to carry out an investigation.

The Forum says that according to new research by American academics, as little as one cup of coffee a day could have a protective effect against Alzheimer's disease. The daily dose of caffeine blocks the disruptive effects of high cholesterol that scientists have linked to the disease, the team's study found. The findings were based on research by the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Nature sauggests that a genetic link that makes people more susceptible to tobacco addiction, causing them to smoke more and have a greater risk of cancer, has been found. Experts said it makes the strongest case so far for the biological link to smoking and sheds light on how genetics and cigarettes cause cancer. The findings, by three separate teams in North America and Europe, could also lead to new anti-smoking treatments.