The front pages are dominated by the Pre Budget report this morning.

The Mail says that it marks the day that New Labour died

Old Labour came roaring back yesterday as Gordon Brown gambled his future on a high-tax, high-borrowing £20billion giveaway.
The Premier sounded the death knell for New Labour by promising to hit the middle classes and target the rich if he wins another term.
His Chancellor Alistair Darling told the Commons: 'We should all share fairly in the burdens of the future

Into the Red says the Times

In a Robin Hood-style budget statement of breathtaking scope, the Chancellor asked 800,000 people who earn more than £100,000 to bear the brunt of a package of deferred tax rises designed to bring down borrowing in 2010, when it will reach a record peak of £118 billion, or 8 per cent of national income

The Independent says Brown goes for broke

His landmark mini-Budget was a pivotal moment which will shape British politics for years ahead and presents voters with a stark choice between two very different futures: a European-style social democracy under Labour, in which the better off pay higher taxes to maintain public services, or a nation of lower taxes and state spending under the Tories

The £21bn tax gamble says the Guardian

Darling promised to kick-start the economy by bringing forward both consumer and public spending, but admitted that it would take the government the length of the next parliament and more to restore the public finances to health through a much tougher than planned clampdown on public spending growth and increases in taxes.

The Telegraph reports that

Millions of higher rate taxpayers - those earning more than £40,000 - will be worse off after the Chancellor unveiled plans to raise the level of National Insurance payments.
People with salaries of more than £150,000 will see a further 5p rise in their income tax rate - a decision that brings to an end Gordon Brown's 11-year-old commitment to not raise the top rate of tax.

The Express has the same lead,Middle Britain bashed says its front page

ALISTAIR Darling last night clobbered the country with a brutal £40billion tax bill.
Middle Britain was left to count the cost as Labour’s “giveaway” mini-budget turned out to be the biggest tax raid in living memory.
Tax cuts now will be paid for by tax rises for years to come

The Sun reports that

ALISTAIR Darling launched a new Thunderbirds-style rescue mission yesterday to help Britain survive the slump — but gambled Britain’s future on massive borrowing.
Last month The Sun depicted the Chancellor as an International Rescue hero tackling the banking crisis.
Now he is the puppet master behind a NATIONAL rescue. But there are massive strings attached.

Fiscal recovery is not confined to Britain

Team Obama promises huge jolt to economy reports the Guardian

President-elect Barack Obama yesterday promised an extraordinary multibillion-dollar economic package to deliver a jolt to the US and stave off what he described as a "crisis of historic proportions".
Obama, introducing his new economic team of Tim Geithner as treasury secretary and Larry Summers as his White House economics adviser, stressed that the scale of the recession required action by the US in tandem with other governments. His team will reach out to other countries to coordinate efforts, he said.

The Telegraph adds

He refused to put an estimate of the cost, but Larry Summers, the new chairman of the national economic council, has suggested it would need to be as large as $700 billion – in addition to the bail-out of the same amount agreed by Congress last month.

'Outlaws' guilty of killing Hell's Angel reports the Independent

Two members of the Outlaws biker gang have been found guilty of murdering a rival Hell's Angel who was shot dead on the M40 after a biker festival last year.
Simon Turner, 41, from Nuneaton, and Dane Garside, 42, from Coventry, were convicted of shooting Gerry Tobin as he rode home from the Bulldog Bash event near Stratford-Upon-Avon last August. The two men were also found guilty of a firearms charge.

The Times reports that more dentists will quit NHS as thousands billed over missed targets

Dentists will be required to refund £120 million to the health service because they failed to treat enough NHS patients last year, The Times has learnt.
About half of dental practices have fallen short of targets for NHS treatment agreed with local health authorities, meaning dentists will have to pay back tens of thousands of pounds each.

Zimbabwe on brink of collapse reports the Guardian

The situation in Zimbabwe may soon "implode" as a cholera outbreak spreads and basic services collapse, South African leaders and a group of international statesmen warned yesterday.
On the eve of talks in South Africa between Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and opposition rivals, South African leaders sharply upgraded their crisis assessment and warned of Zimbabwe's imminent collapse if urgent action was not taken

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change should enter a unity government with Robert Mugabe to protect the country from a humanitarian disaster, the global statesmen of the Elders and the South African government have said

reports the Telegraph and the paper adds

Since the power-sharing agreement was signed in September it has been hamstrung by disputes over the distribution of ministries, which Mr Mugabe allocated unilaterally, leading to fears he will dominate the new structure.
In the meantime, the country's implosion has continued, with hyperinflation independently estimated in the sextillions, millions in need of food aid, and hundreds dying of cholera.

The Independent reports that

A woman hiding a bomb under her long robe blew herself up yesterday among Iraqis waiting to enter the US-protected Green Zone, where lawmakers plan to vote this week on a pact that would let American forces stay in Iraq for up to three more years.
The morning attack in central Baghdad killed seven people, by an Iraqi count, and came about 45 minutes after a bomb destroyed a minibus carrying Trade Ministry employees in the eastern part of the capital.

A top al-Qaeda explosives expert was the main target of the US spy-drone attack in Pakistan last weekend and not the British terrorism suspect who also apparently died in the strike, .
Abu Zubair al-Masri, an Egyptian described as being “high up in the al-Qaeda pecking order”, was understood to have been holding an operational meeting with four other key figures, including Rashid Rauf, the British-Pakistani terror suspect, when three Hellfire missiles were fired at their thick-walled compound in the village of Ali Khel, about ten miles from the Afghan-Pakistan border.

intelligence sources have told The Times

Christmas comes too soon nowadays reports the Telegraph

Dr Rowan Williams said many people are unwilling to wait for Christmas Day to enjoy themselves because of the culture of instant gratification, and so spend the whole of December shopping and eating chocolates from their Advent Calendars.
He pointed out that Advent is a separate, significant part of the Christian year but complained that this message is often drowned out by the shopping frenzy and by carols that are piped through stores.

According to the Guardian

US intelligence officials kept a file on former prime minister Tony Blair's "private life", a former US navy communications operator claimed today.
David Murfee Faulk, who worked at a listening post in Fort Gordon, Georgia, told ABCNews.com he saw the file on Blair in 2006.
But he refused to provide details of what the file, held in an intelligence database called Anchory, contained, other than to say it was a file on his "private life" and included information of a personal nature

The Sun keeps up the pressure on Gordon Ramsey reporting that he

treated Sarah Symonds to a slap-up meal after he is reported to have bedded her.
Blonde Symonds turned up with a pal at the TV chef’s Maze restaurant in London’s Mayfair to be told he would pay for everything.

The Mail reports that

A mother shocked by seeing two half-naked men having sex while out walking the dogs with her daughter was told by police to take a different route in future.
Marie Cragg, 44, spoke of her disgust at the officers' reaction and said she feared the woodland beauty spot would be turned into a no-go area for ordinary members of the public.
The men seen by Miss Cragg and her 18-year-old daughter Jessica were stripped from the waist

Finally the Independent reports that

British tourists who decide to take a late night stroll on Benidorm beach – or perhaps engage in a steamy romantic encounter – might soon be surprised to find their revelry interrupted by a patrolman handing out €750 (£640) fines.
Benidorm, Spain's capital of package tourism and its sex-and-sangria culture, is cracking down on the low-budget debauchery that won it a place in the hearts of thousands of pasty, nose-peeling travellers.
In an uncharacteristic quest for decorum, the city has drafted a strict new beach ordinance that, if passed this week, would regulate everything from sandcastle-building to those past-midnight copulation sessions that have become so popular in recent years thanks to the possibility of instant fame on an internet video.