Malta and international press digest

The following are the leading stories in the Maltese and overseas newspapers today:

The Times leads with the increase in the price of bread and also announces that Frontex maritime patrols are due to start today.

In-Nazzjon says a new scheme will be introduced to encourage people and industry to buy energy efficient equipment. It also reports a new oil price record.

l-orizzont leads with concern expressed by the GWU for the second time in under a month about rising prices.

The Malta Independent also features the bread price rise and carries a picture of the devastation caused y an explosion in Lagos after a contractor his an oil pipeline.

The Press in Britain...

The Daily Mail leads with the story that NHS doctors are refusing to carry out late abortions due to increasing moral objections.

The Daily Telegraph says patients will be encouraged to sign petitions to save their local GP practices.

The Daily Express says the UK economy has shown its first signs of improvement.

The Guardian reports that developing countries have attacked a plan under which almost all the £800m offered by Britain to the international climate warming project would be as a loan and, consequently, would have to be repaid.

The Times says the former Archbishop of Canterbury has defied the Foreign Office and appealed to the group holding five 'forgotten' British hostages abducted in Baghdad a year ago.

The Daily Mirror has an interview with the police officer who was violently attacked when Rangers fans and police clashed in Manchester after the UEFA Cup Final.

And elsewhere...

The People's Daily quotes Chinese President Hu Jintao urging rescuers in the southwestern province of Sichuan to race against time to save lives, days after the most destructive earthquake to hit modern China. The known death toll has been officially put at over 22,000 but is expected to exceed 50,000.

Mynmar Times leads with Burma's ruling junta's decision to take foreign diplomats on a helicopter tour of the destruction caused by a recent cyclone. In a rare admission on the disaster Burma's reclusive military leaders have raised the number of confirmed dead to 78,000. State television said a further 56,000 people are missing. Meanwhile, Thailand's Asian Tribune says the military government continues to restrict foreign humanitarian aid and has showed no signs that it will allow foreign aid workers into the region.

Liberation reports that in a joint swoop, security service agents in France, Germany and the Netherlands have arrested 10 terror suspects accused of funding Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda.

Segodnya announces Ukraine officially joined the World Trade Organisation on Friday, becoming the body's 152nd member

Zimbabwe Independent quotes an announcement in a government newspaper saying that the presidential run-off election has been scheduled for June 27.

Gulf News reports Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has rebuffed President Bush's request to immediately pump more oil to lower record prices, saying it does not see enough demand to increase production.

South Africa's Mail & Guardian is jubilant that Oscar Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated as a child, was finally cleared yesterday to compete at the Beijing Olympics against the fastest men in the world. A ban on Pistorius, 21, competing against able-bodied athletes, because it was feared that he might gain an advantage from running on his carbon-fibre blades, was thrown out by an historic legal decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, marking the end of a long quest for acceptance by the South African.