Two topics dominate the front pages this morning,the conviction of Karen Matthews and the economy.

Pure Evil says the front of the Sun

VILE Karen Matthews was branded the world’s worst mother yesterday — by her own family.
The fathers of her children also queued up to condemn her as a foul-mouthed drunken slob unfit to look after kids.
She cared so little about them she even FORGOT how many she had.

Mother of Pure Evil

says the Mirror which says that

Little Shannon Matthews may have been just minutes from being murdered when she was rescued, senior detectives revealed last night.
They believe Michael Donovan was poised to kill her and flee when officers burst into the flat where he had been holding the nine-year-old captive for 24 days.
Supt Andy Brennan, who led the massive hunt for the youngster said: “I am convinced Donovan was planning to take Shannon’s life rather than face justice.”

There is much coverage in the broadsheets too,the Telegraph reports that

Social workers wrote a report about Karen Matthews highlighting her "inability to successfully place the children's needs above her own" three years before Shannon went missing.For at least 20 months before she disappeared in February, Shannon was being secretly doped with at least five different drugs, including sedatives, painkillers and antidepressants

The Times says that

Shannon was removed from the at-risk register even though social workers knew of reports that the Matthews children were being left alone at night, were not attending school and that there were problems with violence, alcohol and drug abuse in the home.

The Guardian reports

Outside court, neighbours and police condemned the cruelty and waste of resources caused by a scam aimed at stealing £50,000 in reward money for finding Shannon. Julie Bushby, chair of the residents and tenants association on the Moorside estate where Matthews lived with her partner, Craig Meehan, said: "She's let us down. The tears she cried when she did those appeals on TV and when she gave evidence in court were crocodile tears. As for Michael Donovan, he's just weird."

The economy though takes many of the headlines following the drop in interest rates yesterday

Rates cut again as recession deepens says the Times

The economy is plunging deeper into recession despite emergency tax cuts and the multibillion-pound bank bailout, the Bank of England said yesterday.
Cutting the base rate to its lowest level in more than 50 years, the Bank said the outlook now was worse than a month ago, with manufacturing and consumer spending in sharp decline.

The Independent says that

Despite intense pressure from the Government and the Bank of England to pass on cuts in the cost of borrowing in full, many mortgage lenders were slow to respond yesterday to the Bank's latest dramatic move.
Only four lenders said they would pass on the 1 percentage point reduction by the Bank in full to their standard variable rate borrowers. HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Woolwich (owned by Barclays) and Bristol & West (a brand of Bank of Ireland) all said they would be reducing SVR by at least the full 1 per cent, while other lenders continued to keep their rates under review.

The Telegraph reports that

Lenders defied Gordon Brown on Thursday by failing to pass on the full one percentage point cut, which left the Bank's rate at two per cent - as low as at any time in its 300-year history.
Halifax, the country's biggest mortgage lender - which recently received £11.5 billion in taxpayers' money in a Government bail-out - said its customers would only enjoy a quarter-point cut to its standard variable rate.
Nationwide, the biggest building society, said it would only pass on two-thirds of the cut. Of Britain's eight biggest banks, just three promised to pass on the cut in full to their customers.

Savers sacrificed as interest rates are slashed to lowest level since 1939 says the Mail

Millions of savers are staring at a desperate future after the Bank of England slashed interest rates yesterday for the third time in three months.
The biggest losers will be the elderly who rely on income from their savings to top up their measly pensions.
Terrifyingly, they could get as little as £4 a year for every £5,000 they have put aside.

Zero interest rates are on the way says the Express

....But don’t expect cheaper loans, just less for savers
Interest rates were slashed to the lowest level in banking history yesterday amid warnings they could plunge to zero per cent.
After months of cautious inactivity, the Bank of England followed last month’s surprise 1.5 per cent cut with a further one per cent reduction yesterday to leave the base rate at two per cent.

17 judges, one ruling - and 857,000 records must be now wiped clear reports the Guardian

The fingerprints and DNA samples of more than 857,000 innocent citizens who have been arrested or charged but never convicted of a criminal offence now face deletion from the national DNA database after a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.
In one of their most strongly worded judgments in recent years, the unanimous ruling from the 17 judges, including a British judge, Nicolas Bratza, condemned the "blanket and indiscriminate" nature of the powers given to the police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to retain the DNA samples and fingerprints of suspects who have been released or cleared.

The Mail adds that

Nearly a million innocent citizens could see their profiles deleted from the DNA database following a landmark court ruling.
European judges said it was unlawful for police to store swabs and fingerprints from suspects later cleared of wrongdoing.
In a damning verdict, the 17-strong panel said keeping the records 'could not be regarded as necessary in a democracy'.

The Damien Green affair continues to rumble on,the Telegraph says that

The position of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons looked increasingly untenable after the Metropolitan Police contradicted his official account of the raid on Damian Green's Parliamentary office

The end for Mr Speaker? says the Mail

The future of Commons Speaker Michael Martin is in growing doubt today after a war of words broke out between him and Scotland Yard over the arrest of senior Tory MP Damian Green.
A poll suggested two-thirds of MPs think Mr Martin should quit after police were allowed to trample centuries of Parliamentary privilege by raiding the Commons without even being asked for a search warrant.

The Independent reports that

Police mole hunts have begun into other Whitehall leaks in addition to the Damian Green investigation, the Home Office disclosed yesterday as in-fighting intensified between Scotland Yard and the Commons authorities over the raid on the Tory MP's office.
Jacqui Smith, who was forced to make an emergency statement to MPs on the affair, suffered the embarrassment of hearing her predecessor as Home Secretary criticising her handling of Mr Green's arrest

School accused of Mumbai terror role opens its doors reports the Guardian

At first sight, they could be the grounds of an English public school, with neatly trimmed lawns and earnest young pupils walking between classes. But this is the site that India believes is the headquarters of the terrorist group responsible for last week's Mumbai attacks.
Boarding houses provide spartan accommodation, and orderly rows of trees line the sprawling site, just outside the eastern city of Lahore. Smartly turned-out pupils perform science experiments in the classrooms, peering into microscopes and connecting electric circuits. There is a farm, a swimming pool and a hospital.

Indian operative 'helped Pakistani militants' says the Telegraph

The discovery is a blow to Indian officials who have blamed the deadly attacks entirely on Pakistani extremists.
As investigators sought to unravel the attack on Mumbai, stepping up questioning of the lone captured gunman, airports across India were put on high alert amid fresh warnings that terrorists planned to hijack an aircraft.

Israeli forces drag illegal settlers from Hebron house reports the Independent

Furious Jewish settlers went on a violent rampage last night after security forces unexpectedly stormed and evacuated a house the settlers had commandeered in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Fire officers said that three Palestinian houses and nine cars were alight, while the Israeli human rights organisation Btselem released a video apparently showing a settler shooting and wounding a Palestinian at close range and other Palestinians retaliating by pelting the gunman with stones.

Meanwhile the Times reports that

Robert Mugabe’s regime declared a national emergency and appealed for international help to combat rampant cholera yesterday in an unprecedented acknowledgement of its failings.
With the official death toll from the cholera epidemic reaching 570 and 13,000 people infected, the Government admitted that Zimbabwe’s once-proud medical system had collapsed and appealed for help even from Britain, which Mr Mugabe has blamed repeatedly for his country’s many problems.

The Telegraph reports that

British missionaries held in Gambia on sedition charge

David and Fiona Fulton, originally from Troon, Scotland, appeared in court accused of attempting the undermine the country's government.
The Christian couple, who are connected with a pentecostal church in Bolton, moved to Africa 12 years ago and have a two-year-old adopted daughter who is also being detained

The Mail reports that

A gifted teenager killed himself with an overdose of painkillers after his comprehensive school sidelined Christianity in favour of 'alternative religions', an inquest heard today.
Tragic Harry Tucker, 15, read the Bible at home because he believed his religious studies teachers focused on the teaching of Islam and Sikhism.
Straight-A student Harry, was also troubled by his own sexuality and what he saw as unfair detentions.

The Sun reports that

A BOSS earning £70k at disgraced Haringey Council worked for the body that ignored warnings of bad practice before Baby P’s death.
MPs were furious last night after ‘independent’ Margaret Allen got a £20,000 pay rise to leave the Commission for Social Care Inspection to take the role.
Whistleblower Nevres Kemal wrote to the CSCI to say out-of-control social workers were putting lives of Haringey kids at risk — six months before tortured Baby P died.

Many of the papers report on the return of JK Rowling

Booksellers hoping Beedle the Bard will bail them out says the Times

J.K. Rowling has returned to sprinkle much-needed magic over Christmas book sales. Year-on-year book sales registered a decline for the first time in seven years last week and a report from the Booksellers Association in November cautioned that its British members were locked in a “vicious circle” of discounting, shrinking growth and smaller profits.
The publication of The Tales of Beedle The Bard yesterday offers a gleam of hope. A year and a half on from the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last book in the series, bookshops all over the world opened from midnight as Harry Potter mania enjoyed a revival

Finally the Independent reports how

In the US they are going to party like it's 1933

In selected watering holes across America, it's party time tonight. In Washington, the festivities will centre on the venerable City Tavern in Georgetown; for $90 (£61), you can taste the cocktail offerings of the capital's most expert bartenders (or "mixologists" as they like to term themselves), listen to a jazz band and, in the words of the invitation, "party like it's 1933".By now the reason for these goings-on will be plain. Tonight is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition – of 5 December 1933 when Utah became the deciding 36th state to ratify the 21st amendment to the constitution, and restore to the country's citizens the basic human right to go out and have a drink.