PRESS REVIEW – Thursday, May 7: A US judge publishes a purported suicide letter from Jeffrey Epstein, weeks before he was found dead in his prison cell. But first: Swiss authorities are racing to trace contacts of a Swiss man who is being treated for hantavirus after disembarking and freely travelling home while infected with a human-to-human strain of the virus. Plus, Paris Saint-Germain fans are jubilant after the French side make it to the Champions League final.
A Swiss passenger is being treated for hantavirus in Zurich after having contracted the disease aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship. As The Wall Street Journal explains, there are now eight cases of hantavirus, including five confirmed cases and one confirmed death from the virus aboard the cruise ship which set off from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 to Saint Helena. The Swiss man tested positive for the Andes strain of the virus, which is the only strain that enables human-to-human transmission. Swiss officials are rushing to trace his contacts – he fell ill after returning home but was allowed to travel freely during his infectious period – which can be two to eight weeks – meaning he could have potentially exposed many others to the virus.
The health crisis is dominating the Spanish dailies after authorities said the cruise ship will dock in Spain's Tenerife in the Canary Islands by the weekend. Spanish daily ABC notes that the virus has caused a political conundrum: Canary Islands leader Fernanda Clavijo opposed the plan to dock there and Morocco prevented a medical plane from making a stopover. El Pais, meanwhile, reports that 23 passengers disembarked the cruise ship and flew "untracked" to their own countries without undergoing any quarantine – with passengers coming from all over the world, including the US, Australia and Taiwan. El Pais's editors call for calm, saying this virus is much less transmissible between humans than coronavirus. But it adds that the world will need to heed the lessons learned from Covid-19, six years ago.
In the US, a federal judge has released a suicide note that was allegedly written by Jeffrey Epstein shortly before his death. The New York Times published a part of the handwritten letter in which the convicted paedophile allegedly wrote: "They investigated me for months and found nothing." He added that it was a "treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye". Epstein's cellmate allegedly discovered the note in July 2019 after Epstein was found unresponsible with a cloth around his neck. He survived that incident but was found dead weeks later in prison. The letter has not been authenticated but Epstein's cellmate said he found it in a graphic novel shortly after Epstein was removed from their shared prison cell. The convicted paedophile's death was ruled a suicide, but this has not quelled conspiracy theories that he may have been murdered.
In football news, there's jubilation for Paris Saint-German fans after the Parisian side qualified for their second consecutive Champions League final. Fans will hope the team will make it two for two when they face Arsenal in the final in Budapest on May 30. Le Parisien says PSG were "heroic", while French sports daily L'Equipe calls their victory a "total pleasure". Spanish sports paper Sport hails PSG coach Luis Enriques for taking the team to their second final in a row. Arsenal will no doubt have their work cut out of them, as the Daily Telegraph explains.
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