Malta and international press digest

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

The Times says a number of hunters were arrested over the past few days as birds flocked in.

l-orizzont quotes Vince Farrugia, director-general of the GRTU, saying discussion is needed as food prices rise all over the world, including Malta.

In-Nazzjon says the government has reached a cooperation agreement with Kuwait on health services. It also reports that Farsons subsidiary Food Chain will recruit 200 workers to work in its restaurants.

Malta Today midweek says global warming with scorch Malta's tourism in 20 years' time, according to the results of new German research. It also reports former Labour deputy leader George Vella saying that George Abela approved of an early 1998 election. Meanwhile Anglu Farrugia is to also run for the MLP deputy leadership posts.

The Malta Independent says shipping and trailer operators have complained of ‘monopolisation'. It also reports that several persons are to be arraigned for illegal hunting. It also reports that Arnold Cassola failed to be re-elected to the Italian lower House.

The Press in Britain...

The Daily Mail quotes researchers at Copenhagen University warning healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent.

The Daily Telegraph also carries the report into vitamin supplements on its front page, showing that a review of 67 studies on 230,000 healthy people and found "no convincing evidence" that any of the antioxidants helped to prolong life expectancy. But some "increased mortality".

The Times reports mortgage lenders are continuing to raise their rates as fears grow of massive job losses.

The Financial Times quotes Prime Minister Gordon Brown warning that dozens of smaller building societies could be forced to stop offering new mortgages.

And The Independent offers a 10-point plan to get out of the credit crisis, including calling an urgent summit of banks and relaxing all the rules on lending.

The Daily Express reports that the war on motorists is being stepped up with speed cameras tracking every inch of a car's journey.

The Sun carries a picture of troubled rock star Pete Doherty, who is currently in jail after struggling to cope with his addiction to class A drugs.

The Daily Star describes it as a 'major breakthrough' the arrest of the prime suspect in the murder of schoolboy Rhys Jones

The Guardian reports that a wide-ranging police study has found that a rise in crime in Britain was not fuelled by the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe.

The Daily Mirror reports that one of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan was Gary Thompson, aged 51, a reservist who gave up a successful career to return to the forces after 28 years because he wanted to bring freedom to Afghan women.

Metro carries a story of a man who has been taken to court after spending £25,000 on CCTV to help transport police catch criminals.

The Daily Record says a killer escaped from his wife's house while on a home visit from jail... to have a fling with his cousin.

And elsewhere...

Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in Washington at the start of his first visit to the United States since becoming Pope. L'Osservatore Romano says that during the flight from Rome, the pontiff said he was "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the American church and which has forced US dioceses to pay more than €1 billion in damages. The Pope has vowed to keep paedophiles out of the priesthood.

Washington Post reports that President Bush rolled out the red carpet for Benedict as he arrived at the Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. No President has picked up a visiting leader from the airport before. This marks Mr Bush's fifth meeting with two successive Popes, a record for any US president. And it will be only the second time in history that the leader of the world's Roman Catholics has visited the White House.

Al-Ayyam leads with a spate of bombings across Iraq that has left at least 60 people dead and dozens more wounded. In the worst incident in Baquba, at least 38 people were killed and around 80 injured when a car bomb ripped through a crowd outside a courthouse, the worst attack in Diyala province since February.

L'Avenir says at least 21 people have been killed after a Congolese airliner crashed into a market district in the eastern city of Goma. But the airline that operated the DC-9, Hewa Bora, said most of the 79 people on board survived. The market is located just beyond the runway.

In Zimbabwe, government-owned The Chronicle contends that a general strike called by the opposition in a bid to force the electoral commission to release the results of last week's presidential election has had little effect. Police said 30 supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change were arrested for blocking roads, attacking vehicles and coercing people to participate in the strike. However, opposition-leaning Zimbabwe Independent says the move was undermined by fears of a violent crackdown by President Robert Mugabe's government and the desperate need of many Zimbabweans to make enough money to survive in a collapsing economy.

Il Messaggero quotes Italy's prime minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi pledging to use his conservative coalition's victory in elections for both the lower and upper houses of parliament to push through economic reforms. In an interview with Italian television, he also vowed to close the border to illegal immigrants and crack down on crime. The 71-year-old media mogul also said rescuing the flag carrier airline Alitalia and ending the garbage crisis in Naples would be among his top priorities. Meanwhile Corriere della Sera quotes an Al Qaeda Internet site, commenting on Berlusconi's decisive victory, imploring God's wrath on him and on the Pope.

L'Alsace says German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Russia's newly elected lower house of parliament to support reforms of the European Court of Human Rights. Speaking at a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Dr Merkel says the reforms would fast track cases of human rights violations and relieve the court of a backlog of some 80,000 cases. Russia is the only member of the European human rights watch dog which has so far failed to ratify the reforms, known as Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights. Meanwhile, Moscow Times reports that outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted an offer to lead the ruling United Russia party, which control the Duma, while Moskovskij Korrespondent reports on a love story between the divorced Putin and former Olympic athlete Alina Kabaeva. Speaking of the "Sarkozy syndrome", the paper intimates they plan to marry in June.

The German mass-market Bild daily announces that former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, 78, currently confined to a hospital after a fall, plans to marry his 43-year-old partner, Maike Richter, as soon as possible. Kohl had made public his relationship to Richter, an economist at Germany's Economy Ministry, in 2005. His wife of 41 years, Hannelore, died in 2001.

El Mundo reports the arrest of a 34-year-old man while walking along Santomera's main square, carriying his mother's head under his arm. Police say the man confessed he had killed his mother and decipitated her. In the past he had been arrested four times for maltreating her was was twice sent to a mental institution.

The Indianapolis Star reports that a mushroom widely used in oriental medicine may combat breast cancer. A scientific study has given indications that it slows tumour growth and starving them of blood, .