Newspaper headlines: Zika fears and 'student loan jihadi'

Day media

Image captionThree housemates on TV show Celebrity Big Brother climbed into bed together, according to the Daily Star.

Health fears feature on several of Saturday's front pages, and the chief concern is the outbreak of the Zika virus.

"Don't get pregnant" is the warning to tourists who have visited affected areas in the Americas,the Daily Mirror reports.

It says half a million Britons are thought to have visited these areas since the start of the outbreak last year.

Public Health England's advice not to try for a baby is "sensible and a much-needed call to action" in the battle against the "shrunken head virus", which can lead to babies being born deformed, the paper adds.

The virus has already caused almost 4,000 cas
es of malformed babies, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says it is spreading so quickly that four million people could be infected by the end of the year, the Daily Telegraph reports.

It features the case of a British couple who have cancelled a Caribbean cruise because they are trying to conceive and the trip would have taken them "past five Zika-infected islands".

Image captionAuthorities in countries including Peru are fumigating to kill Zika-carrying mosquitoes

The Financial Times says Brazil is readying 220,000 members of its armed forces to help tackle the "emerging epidemic".

It says Latin America has been accused of being slow to combat the virus, with Brazil accused of failing to use "basic preventative strategies".

The WHO's response must be "swift and aggressive", with mosquito nets and insect repellent provided and the search for a vaccine speeded up, the Times says.

"However, the only long-term solution is the eradication of mosquitoes," the paper continues. "Governments in South America came close to achieving this 40 years ago. They must renew the fight."

Eye-catching headlines

• Moses beats Darth Vader in biblical box-office battle - More than three million people bought tickets for Brazilian film The Ten Commandments before its first screening - five times more than pre-sales for the new Star Wars film in the country - the Guardian says.
• Scotland's only vineyard all washed up - The owner of a Fife vineyard has admitted the enterprise is in crisis due to Scotland's weather, the Times reports.
• Fright of the swans - Pensioners in a Gloucestershire residential park are using water pistols to scare off swans which are "attacking property and children", the Daily Express says.
• Strokes of genius - Four British women who took part in a 3,000-mile rowing challenge to cross the Atlantic have completed the voyage, the Telegraph reports.

'Ordinary' jihadist

"Student loan jihadi" is the Sun's front page headline, as it reports on a mother who used her student loan to join Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria.

It says Tareena Shakil, 26 - the first British woman to be convicted of being an IS member - transformed from an aspiring teenage model into a "gun-toting jihadi".

Reporter Robin Perrie, who met Shakil at a police detention centre in Turkey, says he was struck by "how ordinary she was".

He expected an extremist but found a "naive young woman who just wanted to return to creature comforts she was used to", he writes.

Shakil was radicalised on the internet and travelled to Syria via Turkey after telling friends she was going on a beach holiday, the Guardian reports.

'Corporate butterflies'

The row over the amount of tax paid by Google continues to make headlines.

The Independent interviews a former Google worker who handed emails about the firm's tax affairs to investigators.

The whistleblower says HMRC seemed "quite defensive" and "more interested in justifying their position" than investigating.

Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland says national tax collectors are chasing "dazzling, ingenious corporate butterflies with nets that are the wrong size".

"To make these truly global firms pay, governments will have to be just as global," he says.

"Google's tentacles stretch far into the British political establishment", the Times says, noting that company representatives held 25 high-level meetings with 17 different ministers over the last two years.

In a Financial Times cartoon, executives from firms including Google and Facebook ride on clouds along with stacks of banknotes, while British and European officials gather on the ground below. A hand holding a small amount of cash is reaching out from the clouds to Chancellor George Osborne, who waits eagerly with a bowl marked "tax".

Lucan 'fed to a tiger'

The Daily Mail claims to have the solution to a mystery which has puzzled the British public for decades - what happened to Lord Lucan?

A member of the peer's "gambling set" has revealed the answer, the paper says: Lord Lucan shot himself and was then fed to a tiger.

An even older - though rather less famous - murder mystery is tackled by the Telegraph, which says early man wiped out a giant prehistoric bird by roasting its eggs on their fires.

Researchers say burnt egg fragments show humans cooked the eggs of the 7ft Genyornis newtoni, which "roamed Australia before the arrival of man some 50,000 years ago", the paper adds.