What the papers say

Journalist Mike Philpott reviews Thursday's morning newspapers.

There are two very different views of the Twelfth of July in the leader columns of the Belfast papers.

The News Letter says great progress has been made since the mayhem of just one year ago, and members of the Orange Order should have a spring in their step.

The paper believes the civil rights covenant that people are being asked to sign in the weeks ahead strikes the right note.

Tourists will be spending their money in the Irish Republic instead of Northern Ireland

Irish News

It said it could usher in a new era of peace and mutual celebration, free from the violence of recent times.

"Who in their right minds would not sign up to that?," it wonders.

However, the Irish News argues that anyone trying to avoid Thursday's parades will have some difficulty.

Wednesday night's bonfires will have created extra work for the emergency services, it says, and tourists will be spending their money in the Irish Republic instead of Northern Ireland.

"Let us not forget, that Ciaran Cummings was brutally murdered only a week ago, and that many nationalists will be hemmed into their own areas today".

'Embarrassing u-turn'

It is time, the paper believes, for the Orange Order to engage in dialogue and resolve the issue of contentious parades for the good of everyone.

The Dublin-based papers are full of what the Irish Independent calls the Irish Government's "embarrassing u-turn on its electoral bill," which would have banned the publication of opinion polls in the week before an election.

The paper reports that "a glaring loophole has been discovered in that there was nothing to stop an opinion poll being published on election day".

As a result, the whole edifice has collapsed.

The paper comments that this is what comes of drafting bills on the back of an envelope. Hasty legislation is usually bad legislation, it says.

The Irish Times says the government was too clever for its own good, because the scuppering of the bill rules out an autumn election in the republic.

The Independent leads with a shocking report on global warming, reporting that the earth is threatened with disaster much sooner than scientists had predicted.

The paper says climate change is happening faster than at any time for the last 1,000 years, and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest for at least 420,000 years.

Climate changes

The outcome, it says, will be catastrophic for billions of people, and the hardest hit will be in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Scientists predict that areas which currently have enough water will soon have too much in the shape of floods, while others, where it is badly needed, will suffer more droughts.

On a similar topic, the Guardian praises Ken Livingstone's decision to charge motorists £5 a day for driving into central London.

It may not be the best way of tackling pollution and congestion, says the paper, but we have to start somewhere.

Finally, the Times reports that the glamour and excitement of being an astronaut is not all you might expect.

Leaked documents from NASA reveal that the American crews on board the International Space Station have been driven to distraction by problems with their living conditions.

The paper says they had to sleep wearing earplugs because of noisy machinery next to their bunks, and that their US plugs did not fit the Russian sockets.

Sounds like some package holiday.