[texhax] Blank first page problem (how to remove?)

[Johnny]

Short story:
When running pdflatex on a simple test .tex file, I get a blank page
before the first page, why is this and how can I get rid of it?

Test file:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\maketitle
\section{Section 1}
Text
\end{document}

Longer story:
I created a LaTeX file a month or so ago, and compiling it at that time
produced a nice document and no blank first page, but the same file, one month
later, creates a blank first page! For testing I started removing stuff,
and eventually ended up with the file above, but still a blank first
page! I finally got around it by renumbering the pages and using
pdftk to crop away the first page, but this is an undesirable procedure
as it seems to also remove the pdf-bookmarks. During the month in
between, I also went from Fedora 13 to 15, so it may be some change in
the texlive package used. There must be some reason behind this, but I
have been unable to change this behaviour. Further, running the above
produces a 'LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}' message, which seems
counterintuitive as the statement is clearly in the file?

Current versions:
: pdflatex --version
pdfTeX using libpoppler 3.141592-1.40.3-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.6)

: yum info texlive
Installed Packages
Name        : texlive
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 2007
Release     : 62.fc15
Size        : 4.0 M
Repo        : installed
>From repo   : fedora

Any help on this highly appreciated!
-- 
Johnny