UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief says the Guardian

The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed yesterday as the city's police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic.
As British forces finally handed over security in Basra province, marking the end of 4½ years of control in southern Iraq, Major General Jalil Khalaf, the new police commander, said the occupation had left him with a situation close to mayhem. "They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world," he said in an in an interview for Guardian Films and ITV

The Times leads with a similar headline

I came to rid Basra of its enemies, I now hand it back to its friends’

With the stroke of a pen, Britain yesterday signed away the last of four Iraqi provinces that it has struggled to secure since 2003, heralding a new era for the people of Basra and largely ending the British military’s combat role in Iraq.
David Miliband, on his first trip to the country as Foreign Secretary, witnessed the handover at a ceremony in the departure lounge of Basra airport, several miles outside the city and one of the only areas deemed safe enough for a gathering of Westerners

Britain bows out of a five-year war it could never have won says the Independent

The great majority of people in Basra were glad to see the British go. " You can see the happiness on the faces of everyone," said Adel Jassam, a teacher. "It feels like a heavy burden has been lifted off our chests. "
The unpopularity of the British presence is underlined by the results of an opinion poll commissioned by the BBC showing that just 2 per cent of people in Basra believed that the British presence had had a positive effect on their province since 2003. Some 86 per cent said they saw British troops as having a negative impact.

The paper leads with the news that

Britain's carbon strategy 'up in smoke'

Britain's plans to build new coal-fired power stations as part of the country's efforts to address its looming energy crisis will completely undermine the Bali agreement on climate change and discredit Gordon Brown's commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, according to one of the world's leading climate scientists.
The warning will be made directly to the Prime Minister this week in a letter from James Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, who will urge Mr Brown to block plans to build up to eight new coal-fired power stations – the first in 30 years.

According to the Telegraph

English a minority language in 1,300 schools

The Daily Telegraph has obtained data from the Department for Children, Schools and Families illustrating the impact of high levels of immigration on the education system.The figures show that in a total of 1,338 primary and secondary schools - more than one in 20 of all schools in England - children with English as their first language are in the minority.
In 600 of these schools, fewer than a third of pupils speak English as their first language.

And immigration makes the some of the other papers as well

Asylym seekers paid to quit Uk says the Sun

FAILED asylum seekers have been paid £36million in “bribes” to leave Britain, it was revealed yesterday.
More than 23,000 have won windfalls of up to £4,000, with costs, to set up firms in their homeland.
But many are feared to be milking the repatriation scheme.
About 300 have been caught trying to RETURN to Britain after launching their firms. Other foreigners here illegally apply for asylum simply to cash in.

PAID FOR BY YOUR TAXES: AN OSTRICH FARM IN IRAN AND AN ALBANIAN VINEYARD reports the Express

TAXPAYERS are funding thousands of businesses around the world set up by failed asylum seekers who were paid up to £4,000 to go home.
More than 23,000 migrants have pocketed £36million so far.
They are now the proud owners of businesses including hotels, factories, beauty parlours and vineyards as far afield as Iran, Albania, Colombia and Zimbabwe.

The paper leads once again with Maddy

POLICE QUIZ WAITER FOR THIRD TIME

Detectives trying to solve the mystery of Madeleine McCann have questioned a crucial witness for the third time.
Portuguese police believe he could prove that her parents are lying over her disappearance.
Yesterday it emerged that the witness – a waiter at the tapas restaurant where Kate and Gerry McCann dined with their friends every night – has provided investigators with key evidence.

As does the Sun

She deserves better

ANGRY friends of the McCann family last night condemned Portuguese cops for letting suspect Robert Murat “infiltrate” the hunt for Maddie.
Murat sat in on police interviews with vital witnesses including the Tapas 7 – the pals dining with the McCanns the night Maddie vanished.
The oddball Brit expat was also used as interpreter when cops spoke to other witnesses who later pointed the finger of suspicion at him.

The Times reports that

Three teenagers held after Muslim, 17, dies from a knife wound

The victim, aged 17, was attacked near the town’s railway station at about 2pm on Saturday. A 24-year-old man was arrested and later released, but three other young men aged 17, 18 and 19, who are all believed to be white, were still being held for questioning.
Transport police closed the station after the attack but it was reopened yesterday.
Police confirmed the identity of the victim as Ahmed Hassan, 17, from Batley, West Yorkshire. He was in the sixth form at Heckmondwike Grammar School, where he was studying for his A Levels.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that

14 arrested after boy, 16, stabbed to death in brawl at party

A large group of teenagers has been arrested after the murder of a 16-year-old boy following a mass brawl at a birthday party in north London.
The teenager, named by police as David Nowak, from Stoke Newington, died early yesterday, following the disturbance at the party at a community centre in Stoke Newington on Saturday evening.

Tommy Sheridan charged in perjury probe reports the Telegraph

A report was being sent to the Procurator Fiscal and Mr Sheridan was expected to be released on police bail.
The police also searched his home and questioned his wife Gail who gave an alibi in the 2006 libel case against the News of the World.
Earlier in the day detectives came unannounced to arrest Mr Sheridan, 43, as he came out of an Edinburgh radio station where he had presented his Sunday morning radio show, Citizen Tommy.

Labour's sleaze is systemic, says Major reports the Independent

The former Tory Prime Minister also claimed that Gordon Brown had squandered billions of pounds of taxpayers' money during his spell as Chancellor.
In an unusually scathing foray into domestic politics, Sir John protested that Labour had used "McCarthyite" tactics in opposition to portray the last Conservative government as sleazy. "What they did at the time was absolutely unscrupulous," he told BBC1's Andrew Marr show.

The Mail leads with the economy

Christmas credit crunch: One million Britons struggle to meet mortgage payments

Nearly a million families are struggling to pay off their mortgages, an alarming report has revealed.
Another 1.8million people say they have hit problems "at least occasionally".
Soaring interest rates have lifted homeowners' annual mortgage payments by a total of £3.6billion in the past year, the Bank of England survey shows.

The Telegraph reporting meanwhile

House sales slump forcing price cuts

House sellers are cutting prices at the fastest rate for five years in a further sign that the property market is set for a serious slowdown.Asking prices have fallen by 3.2 per cent since November, according to data from Rightmove, a website that gathers information on nine out of 10 houses on the market.

Splits and jeers as ANC seeks a leader reports the Times

The African National Congress (ANC), facing one of the worst splits in its 96-year history, will today begin choosing a new party leader, the first time that the position has been contested in 55 years.
“Voting will start tomorrow morning and go throughout the day,” Thabo Masebe, an ANC spokesman, told reporters after a long delay caused by a dispute between rival factions over voting procedures.
Nominations for the top job closed several hours later than planned. No new compromise candidates emerged, leaving Thabo Mbeki, the incumbent, looking likely to be defeated by Jacob Zuma, his resurgent ANC deputy, a man he dismissed as the country’s deputy president in 2005 after he was linked to an arms corruption scandal.

The Guardian reports that

Turkey launches biggest bombing raid on Kurdish rebels in Iraq

sending more than 50 warplanes to bomb suspected Kurdish insurgent bases inside Iraqi territory, accompanied by long-range artillery shelling. Kurdish officials reported at least one civilian fatality, a woman, and two others injured.
The strike, carried out in the middle of the night, sent hundreds of families fleeing and added to the volatility of a region once considered Iraq's most peaceful but now threatened with the prospect of a major showdown between Turkish forces and the PKK Kurdish rebels.

Politicians held as Israel cracks down on Hamas raids says the Independent

Israeli troops have arrested 24 Hamas activists in Nablus and other West Bank towns, with many of those grabbed from their beds politicians and intellectuals rather than the gunmen usually snared in the nightly raids by Israel since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.
Among those rounded up was Ahmed al-Hajj Ali, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, bringing to 46 the number of MPs now in Israeli custody.

The Times reports that

Supersurgeries to go on trial in first step towards Tesco-style franchises

Plans to abolish small independent surgeries and force family doctors to move to “one-stop shops” serving up to 20,000 patients are being backed by the Government.
The Times has learnt that ministers are supporting a pilot scheme in Birmingham that will require GPs to reapply for their own jobs as part of a wide-ranging franchise scheme.

Tap water beats bottles in taste test reports the Telegraph

London tap water has been rated superior to expensive mineral waters in a blind tasting conducted by some of the most sophisticated drinkers in the country.
At less than 1p a litre, it beat 20 bottled waters, including some which sell for £50 a litre, in the survey conducted by Decanter, the wine drinkers' magazine.
The panel, made up of Masters of Wine, top sommeliers and some of the most experienced palates in the country, voted tap water supplied by Thames Water third equal in a tasting of 24 products.


As the X Factor comes to an end the Sun reports

ODDBALL opera star Rhydian Roberts will still sign a megabucks record deal with Simon Cowell – despite coming second, The Sun can reveal.
The move comes as X Factor viewers claimed the Welsh singer was ROBBED because voting lines were jammed.

Rhydian 'was robbed', claim fans who couldn't get through engaged voting lines reports the Mail

The X Factor's message board and Rhydian fansites were flooded with complaints from fans claiming they could not get through to vote.
The Welshman's supporters claim he was robbed as the voting lines were constantly engaged or unavailable.
Following the recent spate of television phone-in scandals, fans were quick to express their concerns.

Finally the Express reports

'SAFETY TOWN' TOPS ACCIDENT LEAGUE

An area which was one of the first to model itself as a "safety town" is the most dangerous in the country for accidents, it was revealed.
Slough in Berkshire, which is ringed by traffic lights and speed cameras, topped a most-accident table compiled by Endsleigh Insurance Services.
The Berkshire town had an accident rate 35.7% above the national average in 2007, Endsleigh said.