Papers return to foot-and-mouth

Last year's foot-and-mouth epidemic dominates the front pages of the Times and the Independent.

According to the Times, ministers have been swayed by two government reports on the outbreak, into opting for mass vaccination rather than slaughtering tens of thousands of farm animals if the disease returns.

The paper expects the u-turn will anger farmers who fear that vaccinations will jeopardise millions of pounds in exports.

It says it has learned that an official scientific inquiry will recommend scrapping the slaughter policy, with healthy animals being vaccinated to prevent the disease from spreading.

Tagging failure

The Independent says farmers have still to learn the lessons of last year's foot and mouth crisis.

It leads with the case of the untagged pig that had been suspected of having the disease.

The paper says it was transported illegally to an abattoir in Leicestershire, and animal health officials still do not know which farm it came from.

In its leader column, the paper says that like a class of guilty schoolchildren, none of the 34 farmers who supplied the slaughterhouse would own up.

Nazi Duchess

The Guardian says it has uncovered fresh suspicions about the conduct of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during World War II.

Apparently, President Roosevelt ordered that they be kept under covert surveillance because they were suspected of passing on top secrets to the Nazis.

An FBI dossier claims that the real reason behind Edward VIII's abdication, was that Wallace Simpson was a fervent supporter of the Nazi regime, and this was totally unacceptable to Stanley Baldwin's government.

The agency had also been told by a minor German royal that Mrs Simpson had been having an affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to Britain.

He had apparently sent her 17 carnations every day while in England, one for each time they had slept together.

Glasto goings-on

Few papers can resist looking over the fence at the goings-on at the Glastonbury Festival. The Daily Telegraph hails the return of hippy peace and love, which is says has been aided by the new cold-blooded approach to gate crashers.

A five-mile long steel fence, 11ft high, has been erected to prevent the near-anarchy of two years ago.

The Daily Mirror dubs it Fortress Glastonbury, but according to the Daily Mail the festival has become the new Glyndebourne, emerging from its hippie origins in 1970, to become something of a fashionable must-go for social gadflies, as well as music fans.

Tennis darling

All the papers are keeping detailed accounts of the progress of British tennis players at Wimbledon.

The Telegraph pictures a triumphant Greg Rusedski on its front page, while inside it muses on the new darling of British tennis - 18-year-old Elena Baltacha.

Born in Russia , she is the daughter of a famous footballing father Sergei, who played for Dynamo Kiev.

She was five years old on arriving in Britain when her father signed up to Ipswich Town.

The paper says judging by the cheering crowds who willed her to a surprise victory on Thursday, she will have no problems winning British hearts.