The papers take an interest in the Diana inquest this morning

Princess Diana's letters of love to Dodi Fayed says the Telegraph

Deeply personal love letters from Diana, Princess of Wales to Dodi Fayed, written shortly before they died in a Paris car crash, have been disclosed for the first time at their inquest.The candid, handwritten letters, on Kensington Palace notepaper, showed for the first time in Diana's words the true depths of her feelings for Dodi.

My Dodi joy says the Mirror

Two touching love letters Diana wrote to Dodi Fayed weeks before they died were revealed for the first time at her inquest yesterday.
In one, the Princess told Dodi: "A million heartfelt thanks for bringing such joy into this particular chick's life."
Diana said she had adored every minute of a recent six-day holiday on his yacht, describing it as "full of laughter and happiness". She added: sThat combination is a serious treat."

Diana's letters thanked Dodi for 'bringing joy into this chick's life' says the Mail

Written on Kensington Palace paper just weeks before she died, one note thanked him for "bringing such joy into this particular chick's life".
The Princess described a holiday on the playboy's yacht as the "most magical six days on the ocean waves".

REVEALED: DIANA'S SENSATIONAL LOVE LETTERS says the Express

Away from the inquest and the Guardian's front page reports on

Spies, suspicion and empty monasteries - Burma today

Ten weeks after the saffron revolution was crushed, Chris McGreal sent this rare dispatch from a country gripped by fear.
The security policemen who snatched the young shop owner from his bed and hauled him off to the bare interrogation room of Mandalay's police station No 14 really had only one question - and just one answer - in mind.
But the interrogators had an array of techniques to extract the "confession" they wanted to hear from him and the thousands of others scattered in jails across Burma; an admission that the pro-democracy demonstrations led by thousands of monks that shook the country's paranoid military government in September were really a foreign-backed political plot to bring down the regime.

The Times leads with

Designer baby fear over heart gene test

A British couple have won the right to test embryos for a gene that leads to high cholesterol levels and an increased risk of heart attacks, The Times has learnt.
The decision by the fertility watchdog will reopen controversy over the ethics of designer babies, as it allows doctors to screen embryos for a condition that is treatable with drugs and can be influenced by lifestyle as well as genes.

The Independent meanwhile has a slightly different take on the credit crunch

The $4bn killing says the paper

House prices are crumbling on both sides of the Atlantic, growing numbers of homeowners face repossession, financial markets are yo-yoing and the UK saw its first run on a bank in living memory. But for three audacious New York traders it all added up to a $4bn (£2bn) profit opportunity and the biggest jackpot in the history of Wall Street.
The young guns at the investment bank Goldman Sachs – none of them over 40 years old – were unmasked yesterday, prompting a wave of adulation and envy among their colleagues, and another bout of handwringing about Wall Street's ability to make multibillion-dollar profits even as millions of ordinary people face losing their homes.

On the same topic the Telegraph reports that

'Desperate' stores slash prices for Christmas

Figures compiled for The Daily Telegraph by accountancy firm Ernst & Young highlight, for the first time, the scale of the discounting.
According to the report, the biggest chains are on track to knock an average of 36 per cent off all prices in the run up to Christmas.

The continuing talks in Bali are heavily covered

UN climate change deal hanging by a thread says the Times

There were tantrums, threats, publicity stunts, arguments about punctuation and long stretches of mind-numbing technical pedantry and tedium. But the Earth appeared to be at least a little safer as a result.
In the early hours of this morning, environment ministers in Bali appeared to be on the verge of an unprecedented agreement on how to embark upon the next stage of the battle against global warming.

Peter Mandelson laments PM's 'EU dithering' says the Telegraph

Mr Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner and a long-standing enemy of the Prime Minister, suggested that Mr Brown's manoeuvring had undermined Britain's position in Europe.
"In politics you don't win an argument by putting yourself on the back foot," he told the Politics Show on BBC1. "If you have a case, you make it confidently, you present it with conviction."
Echoing the private remarks of other EU officials, Mr Mandelson said Mr Brown should devote more attention to Britain's relations with Europe.

LABOUR ASK: WHY ALL THE FUSS ON EUROPE? says the Express

GORDON Brown agreed another plan to give even more control to Brussels last night – before the ink had dried on the controversial Lisbon Treaty.
On the same day Downing Street dismissed the outcry over the signing as a “fuss over nothing”, Mr Brown rubber-stamped the setting up of a so-called Reflection Group to plot the next power- grab by the EU.

Nationalising Northern Rock will damage Brown, warn Tories reports the Mail

George Osborne said taking a major bank into public ownership would shatter the Prime Minister's reputation for economic competence.
The Shadow Chancellor seized on signs that Downing Street is ready to authorise an emergency takeover of the ailing company in the New Year if plans for a sale fall apart.

Police chiefs blast Home Secretary reports the Mirror

The biggest "union" of rank-and-file police officers yesterday declared they were "at war" with the Government over the pay dispute.
The Metropolitan Police Federation hit out as chief constables lined up to blast Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who decided to stage a 2.5 per cent pay deal - effectively cutting it to 1.9 per cent.


From Kabul to Cowell, battered PM launches comeback blitz says the Guardian

Sipping water at a boisterous end-of-term Christmas party thrown by David Cameron on Thursday night, a senior member of the shadow cabinet reflected on Labour's tactics this week: "I know what it is like. When we have been in trouble, and you are looking for a turning point, we have tried the same thing. It is like in world war one, you dig a big tunnel under enemy lines, pack it full of your best explosives, and send it up. It is distraction politics."

News from abroad and the Guardian reports that

South Africa in turmoil as Mbeki heads for defeat

President Thabo Mbeki is facing a humiliating defeat of his attempt to remain leader of the ruling African National Congress by the man he sacked as South Africa's deputy president, Jacob Zuma, when the party's conference opens tomorrow.
In the most significant political upheaval since the ANC won power with the collapse of apartheid in 1994, Zuma has assembled a seemingly unassailable coalition from the party's left wing and factions opposed to Mbeki in a bitter and sometimes dirty leadership race that has divided the party and the country.

Aid agencies help Liberia's abused war women reports the Telegraph

Across Liberia, women are catching up on missed education, finding jobs and rebuilding their lives thanks to programmes set up by aid agencies including Plan International, one of this year's Telegraph Christmas Appeal Charities, supported by the Lord Deedes of Aldington Trust.
The agency, which sponsors children in developing countries with donations from individuals in the West, is running a global campaign called "Because I am a Girl", which highlights women's rights.
Few countries could benefit more than Liberia from such a campaign. It is thought that 70 per cent of women here were raped during the wars.


Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warns American church leaders to curb their pro-gay agenda reports the Times

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, asserted his authority over Anglican leaders yesterday in a document sent to all archbishops that said that those who went against the “mind” of the Church risked being excluded from its councils.
The warning, spelt out in his long-awaited Advent Letter to the Church’s 38 Primates and other leaders, could lead to The Episcopal Church of the US and the Anglican Church of Canada forfeiting their seats at the top tables of the Anglican Church if they do not curtail their liberal pro-gay agenda.

The Mail reports that

Police prepare to drop the hunt for missing data discs containing the personal details of 25million Britons

Scotland Yard plans to end the £500,000 search for the missing HM Revenue & Customs CDs before Christmas.
The discs, containing the personal and banking details of seven million families claiming Child Benefit, disappeared in October after a junior official in HMRC's Tyne and Wear offices posted them to the National Audit Office in London.

The Sun leads with Maddy this morning

Clueless says the paper

MADDIE suspect Robert Murat looked sweaty, excited and breathless when he was drafted in as a translator by bungling cops the day after her disappearance, it emerged yesterday.
Portuguese police turned to him during a string of breaches of basic procedure.
They were revealed by holidaymaker Bridget O’Donnell - a former BBC producer who worked on Crimewatch.
They included FAILING to recognise a picture of Madeleine McCann and taking notes on a SCRAP of paper. Clueless colleagues had already forgotten to secure the crime scene and had allowed potential evidence to be trampled over.

Portuguese police 'came within an inch of jailing Kate McCann' says the Mail

Detectives questioning the mother allegedly wanted to charge her with "homicide with eventual intent" - a crime that allows a suspect to be remanded in custody until their trial.
But the night before she was interrogated for the second day, the public prosecutor in the case advised the detective then in charge - Goncalo Amaral - that they did not have enough evidence, it was claimed.


The Mirror meanwhile updates us on another of the year's tragedies

Lonely Christmas for Rhys Jones' family

The family of murdered schoolboy Rhys Jones spoke yesterday about how they are facing up to Christmas without their beloved son.
His dad Stephen, 44, has written a poem thanking his son for the 11 years of bliss they had before he was shot dead by a teenage gunman on August 22.
Stephen and Rhys's mum Melanie, 41, said: "The loss of Rhys has left a huge, empty void that can never be filled.

The Sun reports that

FABIO Capello’s dad was an ENGLAND fan – who survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
The Italian war hero instilled in his son the need to work hard, learn well and NEVER to be afraid of anything.
But most of all, following his three years of hell at the hands of the Germans, Guerrino Capello taught his boy the importance – even in the toughest of circumstances – of being happy.

The Times reports that

Plagues of Egypt ‘caused by nature, not God’

The ten Plagues of Egypt recounted in the Bible and which caused Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free were nothing more than natural “population imbalances” caused by environmental factors, a leading scientist has claimed.
Professor Roger Wotton, a biologist at University College London, says in the student academic journal Opticon 1826 says the dramatic series of events, that included the Nile turning to blood and a plague of frogs, are explicable as natural phenomena.

Miracle on Merseyside - Liverpool remakes the nativity reports the Guardian

The Virgin Mary comes from Knotty Ash, one of the angels used to be in Brookside, and Herod is a woman.
This version of the Christmas story, to be played out on the streets in the centre of Liverpool and broadcast live on BBC3 tomorrow night, has a cast of 300, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, a technical crew of 150 and is produced by the BBC team responsible for last year's Manchester Passion.