26th November

All the papers are speculating on the death of Alexander Litvenko this Sunday morning.The Independent asks

Litvinenko: police probe claims he may have killed himself

According to the paper,one line of enquiry may be

“examining the possibility that the former spy killed himself to discredit Vladimir Putin.

“Increasing concerns over the reliability of the Russian dissident's death-bed testimony have prompted police to check every detail of Mr Litvinenko's version of events on 1 November, the day he said he was poisoned.”

Others have identified possible assassins.The News of the World says

THE ruthless assassin at the centre of the Litvinenko poison murder is a highly-trained veteran of Russia's deadly Spetsnaz special forces.
The News of the World knows the killer's full identity but for legal reasons we are just using his middle name Igor.
The 46-year-old expert in covert operations was dramatically fingered in a bombshell document passed to former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko at London's Itsu sushi bar before he was slipped lethal radioactive polonium-210.

The Telegraph says

“Detectives will fly to Moscow and Rome this week in an attempt to unravel the mysterious radioactive poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector.
Senior security sources in Britain suspect that Russian agents — possibly a rogue unit — were behind the sophisticated nuclear weapons element used to commit the murder.
Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command wants to question two Russians and an Italian professor who lunched with Mr Litvinenko at the same Japanese restaurant in central London, just two weeks apart.”

The Times claims that Litvenenko named the suspect on his death bed

“He named the agent in charge of monitoring him as “Viktor Kirov”. A man called Anatoly V Kirov worked at the Russian embassy in London, where he was listed as a diplomat, until late last year.

He is believed to have left the diplomatic service in October 2005 and returned to Russia. But Litvinenko claimed just days before he died that Kirov was an intelligence agent who continued to target him.”

The Observer links the case to theft from nuclear facilities

“An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.
As British police drew up a list of witnesses for questioning over the death, experts warned that thefts from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union were a major problem.”

Its lead story though concerns the announcement that the Prime Minister is due to make

Blair: Britain's 'sorrow' for shame of slave trade

“Tony Blair is to make a historic statement condemning Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade as a 'crime against humanity' and expressing 'deep sorrow' that it ever happened.
The Prime Minister plans to go further than any previous leader in seeking to distance himself from the actions of the British Empire, nearly 200 years after the 1807 legislation that led to slavery's abolition. However, he will stop short of making an explicit apology despite years of pressure from some black campaigners and community leaders.”

The Telegraph meanwhile leads on the news in a specially commissioned poll that

“ clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone”

The Indie’s front page is taken over by an investigation into the fur trade with it results being:

“record numbers of Britons are buying real fur, overturning decades of campaigning by activists who say substitutes should be worn instead.
Sales of fur clothing have hit £500m for the first time, up 30 per cent on two years ago, with £40m of new fur products being imported every year.”


The Pope’s visit to Instanbul is widely covered

The Indie reports that

Pope flies to Turkey amid fears
“pope Benedict XVI arrives in Turkey tomorrow for a visit not only dogged by controversy but fraught with security worries.
“About the only good news for the Pope is that Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to assassinate his predecessor, is still behind bars. Since shooting John Paul II outside St Peter's Basilica in 1981, Agca has been in jail in Italy and Turkey.”

The Telegraph reports that

“An army of snipers, riot police, secret agents and bomb disposal experts has been mobilised for the Pope's four-day visit to Turkey. Naval units will patrol the Bosphorus armed with machine guns after warnings to police and security services that the life of Benedict XVI may be threatened by Islamic extremists after he arrives on Tuesday.”

The Sunday Times reports that

British coast faces 2ft rise in sea levels

BRITAIN’S coasts and oceans are being changed for ever by rising sea levels, bigger waves and stronger storms, a government report will warn this week.
The study, the most thorough yet carried out into the impact of climate change on the country’s marine environment, warns that sea levels could rise by as much as 2ft-3ft by 2080 and that the height of the biggest waves hitting our shores is already rising.

Writing in Today’s Observer Andrew Rawnsley reflects on the setbacks to the Olympics this week

“In the time that it takes you to read to the end of this sentence, the cost of the London Olympics will have risen by another billion pounds. Worse, I have no idea whether that is an exaggeration or an underestimate of the soaring bill for staging the Games. After the grisly experience of the Millennium Dome, you might have thought that this government would have been once burnt, twice shy of the construction and mass entertainment business. After the money-guzzling, credibility-munching monster that was the dome, Tony Blair half-apologised for that fiasco and sighed that there would be 'lessons to be learnt' about the running of large infrastructure projects. Well, if remedial classes in event management and construction ever happened, no one involved with the Olympics seems to have attended them. The disaster that was the dome is now being replicated on an even more gargantuan scale on the other side of the Thames.”

The Sunday Mirror’s front page announces that

“PRINCES William and Harry are organising a massive pop concert to mark the 10th anniversary of their mother's death.

The gig will be staged at the new Wembley Stadium on July 1 next year, which would have been Diana's 46th birthday.

The emotional show, which the princes will host, will be held a month before the anniversary of her death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997.”

Amongst the Review sections,The Sunday Times focus team report on

The changing face of Tory boy

“Most people might expect to spend their anniversary sipping a glass of champagne at a nice restaurant. But not Dave Cameron. Next week it will be business as usual as he completes his first 12 months in the post of leader of Her Majesty’s opposition.”

“Last week, when Blair was returning from a visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan, it was the pictures of Cameron posing with refugees in Darfur that stole the front pages. He sat cross-legged on a rug, listening to eyewitness accounts of how the Janjaweed militia had attacked nearby villages. “It is quite horrific,” he said.

The big question is whether this change of image is enough. Cameron has yet to come up with any substantive policies. His policy groups will not report until the summer, when Gordon Brown is likely to be appointed the new prime minister, so we will have to wait and see.

Finally listing his highs and lows
HIGHS

· Making a visit to the Arctic to raise awareness of the melting ice caps, leading to dramatic pictures of him sledding across a glacier with huskies

· Putting an England flag on his bicycle during the World Cup finals in the summer

· Getting away with choosing the song Ernie for Desert Island Discs, while Gordon Brown was pilloried for saying he had the Arctic Monkeys on his iPod

· Wearing exclusive Converse Velcro trainers for a photo shoot, showing what a cool dude he was and “in touch with the kids” Regular pictures of him taking his children out shopping, his daughter on his shoulders and glowing wife beside him

LOWS

· Calling for people to “hug a hoodie” let Labour claim he was soft on crime

· Claiming he still cycles to work, then being caught out when it was revealed his chauffeur followed along behind with his briefcase and change of clothes

· Putting a wind turbine on his roof: the wind was knocked out of his sails as it merely drew attention to an expensive revamp of his £1.1m

· London home Promising to pull the Tories out of the federalist grouping in Brussels, only to be forced into a U-turn when no one else wanted to form a new group with Cameron’s party

· Forcing a vote over Iraq in the Commons led to accusations of “opportunism” and hypocrisy as the Tories first backed the war The ups and downs of being a modern Tory leader