Newspaper headlines: Probe into Trump email 'leak' and new sleeping advice By BBC News

Staff Published duration 13 July 2019

image copyright Getty Images image caption Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said he would "advise" editors "not to publish leaked government documents"

A number of MPs have told the Daily Telegraph that they are deeply concerned about Scotland Yard asking the media not to publish leaked government documents - in the wake of the Sir Kim Darroch affair.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb says Britain cannot "contemplate any slippery slope to a police state" that limits the freedom of the press to report, while former culture secretary John Whittingdale describes the idea of prosecuting journalists as "completely wrong".

The paper says the government is bracing itself for further revelations in the Mail On Sunday - following claims that the person behind the leak is determined to bring down civil servants standing in the way of Brexit.

The comment sections feast on Andrew Neil's grilling of the Conservative leadership candidates on BBC One on Friday evening.

It was, The Times says, "like being pierced by a porcupine" - as the two rivals went head-to-head with a "veteran slicer of bombast and waffle".

In his sketch, Quentin Letts suggests that Jeremy Hunt came off worst - "sat in the terrifying black chair with the upright, stiff posture of a nervous motorist sitting his driving test" - while Boris Johnson "showed more fight".

But the Telegraph's Leo McKinstry doesn't think we learned very much. "There were no deadly googlies from Neil", he says, "just well anticipated bouncers which were dealt with easily."

The Guardian has an extensive interview with E. Jean Carroll, the New York journalist who claims she was raped by Donald Trump in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

She tells the paper she now sleeps with a loaded gun by her bed after her decision to go public with the allegations last month prompted online death threats - forcing her to stop looking at her social media accounts.

But she praises the "huge" number of women who have been in touch to share their own stories, telling reporter Ed Pilkington it's "the biggest thank you you can get". President Trump has previously dismissed Ms Carroll's claims as "fiction".

image copyright Getty Images image caption Journalist E. Jean Carroll

The Daily Mail leads on what experts say is a "paradigm-shifting" procedure to restore sight to the blind.

In a world-first trial in the US, five men and a woman partly regained their vision after their brains were fitted with electrodes which can receive images from a small video camera mounted on a pair of glasses.

One of the patients, Benjamin James Spencer, tells the paper of his joy at seeing his wife and three daughters for the first time, although he points out the quality of the images is akin to "grainy 1980s surveillance video footage".

Researchers say they hope to further refine the technology, and expect it to become widely available within three years.

The FT Weekend reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under intense pressure to explain a series of recent trembling fits - amid growing concerns about her health and whether she is well enough to stay in office.

media caption Angela Merkel is seen shaking for a third time in a month

German officials are said to be "stubbornly tight-lipped about the episodes", which were initially blamed on dehydration.

One political scientist tells the paper that Mrs Merkel - who turns 65 next week - needs to end the speculation. "It undermines public trust in her much more", he says, "than if she just came out and said exactly what the problem was".

Grandmaster chess cheat

And a scandal that has rocked the world of elite chess draws the attention of several papers.

Igors Rausis, a 58-year-old grandmaster, had been held up as an exception to the rule that players' abilities decline as they get older.

There was therefore dismay when - during a tournament in the French city of Strasbourg on Thursday - he was photographed in a toilet cubicle supposedly looking up moves on his mobile phone.

The Times claims that Mr Rausis has since admitted cheating, and expects a lifelong ban, while the Daily Mail says officials from the World Chess Federation had been investigating him for months.

A controversial drug based on ketamine could - according to the Guardian - revolutionise the treatment of severe depression, if it is approved for use in the UK later this year.

Researchers say that esketamine, which is inhaled using a nasal spray, has been shown to work much more quickly than conventional anti-depressants - sometimes within hours.

But some experts have raised questions about its overall effectiveness, and fear there could be serious risks for patients using ketamine over long periods. Regulators are due to decide whether to license the drug in November.

Meanwhile, a study featured in the Sun suggests that surgical gowns used in hospitals retain superbugs, even after they have been disinfected.

Scientists in Plymouth and Cardiff found that during testing, three different strains of the bacterium, C difficile, remained on the gowns after 10 minutes of treatment. The team said it was "worrying" and underlined the need for "robust" infection control procedures.

image caption The winner of Saturday's Wimbledon final between Serena Williams and Simona Halep will take home £2.35m

And many papers look ahead to a bumper day of sport that has been dubbed "Super Sunday".

According to the Daily Mirror , £100m of bets will be placed on the Cricket World Cup final, the men's singles final at Wimbledon and the British Grand Prix, while the Daily Express reports that 25 million pints will be served to customers glued to big screens in pubs and bars.