No doubting the main story this morning with all the papers running with what the Mail refers to as

Private details of EVERY family in Britain 'lost' by taxman in major security blunder

Everyone who receives child benefit is under threat of fraud after a catastrophic blunder by civil servants.
Two computer discs packed with the personal and banking details of 25million people - nearly half the UK's 60million population - have disappeared in the post.
Last night, Chancellor Alistair Darling was trying to head off a consumer panic after he admitted that nearly every family in the country is at risk. Police were ransacking offices in London and the North East for the missing CDs, but insisted there was no evidence they have fallen into criminal hands

25 MILLION VICTIMS says the front page of the Mirror

Chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday urged every family with children to check their bank accounts for fraud after the biggest data security breach in British history.

SKIP TO THE LOO MY DARLING says the Sun

The Sun can reveal the scandal, one of the worst government security breaches ever, could have been AVOIDED — for the sake of a tenner.
A senior source at HM Revenue and Customs — whose supremo Paul Gray yesterday quit his £170,000-a-year post over the fiasco — blamed penny-pinching on postage after cuts were ordered last year.

From the rest of the papers,

Who,What,Why,When Where says the Independent

Who decided to post two discs with personal and financial details of 25 million people by unregistered delivery?
What has become of the missing discs and could they have fallen into the hands of fraudsters?
Why did the Government wait 10 days before telling the public what had happened?
Where will the buck stop after the revenue chief's resignation?
When can the British people be sure once again that their money is safe in their bank accounts?

The Telegraph reports that

The Chancellor, who first learnt of the “catastrophic” breach eleven days ago but only disclosed the first details, insisted there was no evidence the information “has found its way into the wrong hands”.
But experts warned that the data could be hoarded for years by criminal gangs before being used to commit fraud on an unparalleled scale.

The Times says that

No evidence of criminal activity has been detected but Scotland Yard has appointed an expert in organised crime to head the investigation. Acting Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams is heading a team of 12 officers who are combing Government offices for the lost data. The Serious Organised Crime Agency is also advising on the potential criminal abuses of information about the identities and finances of 7.25 million British households.

The Chancellor comes in for a lot of critisism

Disasters begin to pile up at the feet of the chancellor says Simon Hoggart in the Guardian

Another day, another disaster - and this one was a stonker. The news that the private records and bank details of 25 million people were lying around on a computer disk, heaven knows where, like a Rockin' Good Christmas CD that's fallen out of a Sunday paper, was greeted by MPs with incredulity.

Crisis puts 'safe hands' Darling back in spotlight says the Independent

He is certainly making up now for his low headline count. Since becoming Chancellor in June, he has rarely been off the front pages. "It just hasn't stopped," a friend admitted yesterday.
Being Gordon Brown's Chancellor was never going to be easy. But Mr Darling could never have foreseen how difficult unexpected events would make it. As if the first run on a British bank for 140 years were not enough, Mr Darling is now having to defend what is probably the biggest breach of personal security details in Europe.

Quinten Letts in the Mail asks

Who is running this Government? Stan Laurel? Inspector Clouseau? There was certainly a whiff of the Surete's celebrated cock-up artiste when Alistair Darling - poor, poor Darling, the human dartboard - entered the Commons.
As this accident-prone Chancellor of the Exchequer started to describe the vintage foul-ups which led to 25million people's personal details getting lost in the post, perhaps the only surprise was that he did not have a dented bowler hat on his head and one foot stuck in a bucket of whitewash.

STRIKE 2 says the Sun

THE eye-popping scale of this government’s latest fiasco beggars belief.
First we saw Chancellor Alistair Darling trying to justify bucketloads of taxpayers’ cash for bankrupt Northern Rock.
Now he is forced to explain how tax chiefs lost CDs containing sensitive files on 25 MILLION citizens.

Another day, another disaster says the Guardian's leader

Of all the flak Mr Darling took in the Commons yesterday, it was surely the dig made by George Osborne - nearly 20 years his junior - that stung the most: "Never mind the vision - just get a grip and deliver a basic level of competence."

The paper previews another crisis waiting for the government

Auditors condemn rushed MoD sale that turned civil servants into multimillionaires

The Ministry of Defence will be severely criticised by the National Audit Office this week for allowing two senior civil servants to become multimillionaires in a rushed privatisation of the department's research arm.
The part-sale of QinetiQ was ordered by the Treasury in the late 1990s and led to government assets being snapped up by a US private equity company at an eighth of their value.
A report by the National Audit Office on the deal will condemn the incentives offered to officials for securing it, and the failure to get a decent price for the business. "The report will be highly critical of the whole process, in particular the over-incentives given to senior civil servants to privatise part of QinetiQ," a source with knowledge of the report said.

Away from that story and the Independent stays with politics

Huhne denies he was responsible for 'Calamity Clegg' campaign document

He may have apologised for the inflammatory campaign against his rival for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats but Chris Huhne insisted yesterday that Nick Clegg had left "too many loose ends" in his political vision to carry the party into a new era of reinvigorated three-party politics.
Mr Huhne reiterated his regret over the "Calamity Clegg" slogan which appeared on leaflets written by his staff, but said he stood firmly by his message that the younger contender had "flip-flopped" on policies.

Senior UK constable resigns amid inquiry reports the Telegraph

One of Britain's most senior police officers was "pensioned off" early over claims that a personal friendship had "got out of hand", it has been disclosed.Terry Grange, the married chief constable of the Dyfed Powys force, retired on Monday after admitting he had allowed his private life to interfere with his work and could no longer continue in his job.

According to the Times

New wave of immigration blamed for doubling of hepatitis B cases

The Hepatitis B Foundation estimates that the numbers infected by the disease in Britain have almost doubled in the past five years, to 326,000. More than half of these people are immigrants from Africa, Asia, Russia and the new EU nations.

Only the Express chooses to lead with a different story and you've guessed

I SAW MADELEINE WITH MURAT’S GIRL IN MOROCCO

ROBERT Murat’s lover was seen in Morocco minutes after Madeleine McCann was spotted nearby, it was claimed yesterday

Doctor: I was wrong to embalm Diana says the Mirror

The man who embalmed Diana, Princess of Wales, yesterday admitted he made a mistake by not waiting for an official go-ahead.
Jean Monceau told an inquest that although he is sure he did nothing wrong or illegal in preparing Diana's body for viewing, getting full authorisation could have prevented subsequent questions and conspiracy theories.

Most of the papers report

Ian Smith, ex-PM of Rhodesia, dies at 88

Smith governed the country, now called Zimbabwe, for 15 years from 1964 to 1979, a turbulent period of guerilla war and international isolation. Seen by many as the symbol of colonial-era racism in Africa, Smith was unrepentant to the end, convinced that Zimbabwe would have been better off under minority rule than that of his successor, the current President Robert Mugabe, with whom he shared nothing but a disdain for Britain.says the Guardian

Ian Smith: Man whose folly unleashed Mugabe says David Blair in the Telegraph

As prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, he caused one of the great post-war crises by unilaterally declaring independence - known as UDI - on Nov 11, 1965.
At a stroke, Rhodesia severed all ties with Britain and became a renegade republic, led by a treasonable regime, recognised by no-one save apartheid South Africa.


Palestinians spell out their vision of the future in peace blueprint reports the Independent

The reform programme to help reverse the "tragic history" of the seven years since the collapse of the Camp David talks and the beginning of the intifada is contained in the 33-page draft of a document which will be presented to the international donors' conference in Paris next month. The confidential draft is the most concerted effort yet by the Western-backed administration loyal to the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to demonstrate that it can develop the capacity to run the independent state in the West Bank and Gaza envisaged in the negotiations due to be kick-started by the international summit in Annapolis, Maryland, next week. The US started issuing formal invitations to the summit last night.


Clinton plays Jakarta card in attack on Obama reports the Guardian

The battle between Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama became increasingly personal and acrimonious today when she rounded on him over the politically-loaded issue of his time in Indonesia.
On the day that a poll showed Obama opening up a lead over Clinton on key issues for the first time, she brought up his time living in the predominantly Muslim country.
Obama was brought up in Jakarta, Indonesia between the age of six and 10 after his mother married an Indonesian.

Meredith Kercher murder suspect is arrested after being stopped on German train reports the Times

A drug dealer suspected of involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher was arrested yesterday after police tracked the use of his internet accounts to the German city of Mainz.
Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, who has joint Italian and Ivorian nationality, was arrested by German police after boarding a train without a ticket. He left Perugia after Ms Kercher’s murder nearly three weeks ago.

According to the Mail

Fourth suspect arrested in Meredith murder told web users: 'I am a vampire who sucks blood'

Guede was arrested after he was caught fare-dodging on a train between Koblenz and Mainz.
Mr Guede disappeared soon after the murder, and told friends: "I'm going dancing in Milan."
Detectives had traced the basketball player to Germany through e-mails.
He had told journalists at several newspapers, including the Daily Mail, that he wanted to give himself up to police.

Ahead of tonights football,the Sun reveal that

Croatian FA chief is a shoplifter

THE boss of Croatia’s Football Association was nicked for SHOPLIFTING yesterday – minutes after jetting in with the team for tonight’s Euro 2008 clash with England.
Tubby Zorislav Srebric – general secretary of the Eastern European country’s FA – was arrested at Gatwick after allegedly stuffing pens and paper into his flight bag.

GET IT RIGHT ..OR ELSE! says the Mirror

The stakes were already high enough for Steve McClaren before he revealed the gambler within.
But now the England boss will send his team out at Wembley tonight knowing that he must get it right - or face the wrath of an angry nation.
By axeing both David Beckham and Paul Robinson for the match that will determine if he has a future at Soho Square, McClaren has shown he is a man of his own mind, that he is prepared to take the big decisions.

The Mail reports on a COD CATASTROPHY

Britain is to take on Brussels over fish quotas after it emerged that fishermen are being forced to dump nearly one million tonnes of dead fish into the North Sea each year.
The practice was described as "immoral" by Fisheries Minister Jonathan Shaw, who said he would push for an increase in Britain's cod quota next year.
However, environmental campaigners described any move to raise quotas as foolhardy and said North Sea cod stocks were still dangerously low.


Finally the papers go back in time 400 million years

The giant claw of a cannibalistic sea scorpion bigger than a man is unveiled and suggests the Earth was once teeming with giant creepy crawlies.reports the Telegraph

The sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, nicknamed "Jake", is thought to have lived 390 million years ago and, given this claw is about half a metre long, is estimated to have been around 2.5 m long – almost half a metre longer than previous estimates and the largest ever to have evolved.