Blunders leave 500 offenders 'missing'

The latest Home Office problems are the lead in the Times this morning

Hundreds of offenders who committed crimes abroad including murder, rape and sex abuse could be working unchecked back in Britain with children or other vulnerable people after a new blunder by the Home Office.
Urgent inquiries were under way by police last night to see if more than 500 of the serious offenders, including paedophiles, have managed to secure jobs working with children.
Last night John Reid, the Home Secretary, was forced to admit that he knew nothing about the latest fiasco, which led to the troubled Home Office in effect “sitting on” details of British citizens convicted of offences abroad. Six years of information, which should have been entered into the Police National Computer (PNC), has been left to gather dust at Mr Reid’s department.

The Guardian says that

A major row broke out last night between the Home Office and senior police officers over how more than 500 serious offenders escaped criminal records vetting despite being convicted of offences around Europe.

Whilst the Express headlines

Killers cleared to work with our children

HUNDREDS of murderers, rapists and other serious offenders could be working with children or vulnerable people be-cause of a shocking Home Office blunder.

They include 25 rapists, 29 child abusers and five murderers and most of the documents were left gathering dust in box files in a Home Office unit.

The Guardian leads with

Families told elderly care crisis looming

Reporting that

Families face a growing burden of care for elderly and disabled relatives and most people will have to pay for their own support services in old age as the state's role shrinks, the government's care watchdog will warn today.
A fundamental shift in responsibility is taking place as councils respond to spiralling demand by concentrating resources on fewer people with greater needs, the Commission for Social Care Inspection will say in a report.

The news of American raids on Somali are covered in all the papers,

'Many dead' as US bombers return to Somalia to attack 'al-Qa'ida suspects'

Headlines the Indy

The Pentagon said the US Special Operations Command had been pounding remote border areas of Somalia for the past two days. Witnesses reported many dead after an AC-130 aircraft fired on the village of Hayo, near the Kenyan border, on Monday.
The Bush administration claimed last night that "five to 10" people associated with al-Qa'ida had been killed, and a handful of others wounded in the attack, which, according to the Pentagon, was based on "credible intelligence".

The Mirror describes the raid as

PAYBACK - AMERICAN BLITZ ON SOMALIA

The attacks are believed to have been ordered by President Bush in revenge for the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa.

The Telegraph reports that

School catchment areas to be scrapped

Children from middle-class families may miss out on the best schools under plans to allocate places by "lottery".
New admissions rules, published yesterday by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, suggest that head teachers in leafy suburbs should draw names from a hat to stop schools becoming monopolised by families who buy houses nearby. Schools are also banned from considering parents' backgrounds, interviewing families or pricing poor children out by ordering families to buy uniforms from expensive suppliers.

It is a day when all the papers have varying leads and themes.

The Mail has a picture of a cow on its front page with the headline

Clone farming has arrived

The black and white calf may look unremarkable.
But Dundee Paradise is evidence that clone farming - designed to deliver supersize cows producing an astonishing 70 pints of milk a day - has arrived in Britain.
Her birth last month exposed glaring gaps in the Government's system for policing livestock farming.
It raises the prospect of milk and meat from the offspring of clones reaching the shops without proper safety checks.

Whilst both it and the Express show prominence to the story that

A CHEAP blood test could prevent tens of thousands of deaths from heart attacks and strokes.The simple £15 check can predict whether millions of patients with early heart disease are at risk of more life-threatening problems.The dramatic breakthrough, unveiled last night, means that for the first time doctors will be able to tell which people are likely to go on to develop potentially fatal conditions.

The Indy's front page reveals

EU: Climate change will transform the face of the continent

Europe, the richest and most fertile continent and the model for the modern world, will be devastated by climate change, the European Union predicts today.
The ecosystems that have underpinned all European societies from Ancient Greece and Rome to present-day Britain and France, and which helped European civilisation gain global pre-eminence, will be disabled by remorselessly rising temperatures, EU scientists forecast in a remarkable report which is as ominous as it is detailed.
Much of the continent's age-old fertility, which gave the world the vine and the olive and now produces mountains of grain and dairy products, will not survive the climate change forecast for the coming century, the scientists say, and its wildlife will be devastated.

Whilst following up on yesterday's story

Blair tries to offset fury over flights policy

Mr Blair told a press conference last night: "This country leads the world both in terms of the issue of climate change and also meeting our Kyoto targets on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. But I am not going to be in the situation of saying I'm not going to take holidays abroad or use air travel. It's just not practical."

Briefly returning to climate change,the Telegraph reports

It was Jan 9 and people were out in T-shirts yesterday. The balmy winter weather – the warmest on record in parts of Britain – is causing confusion all round.
Humans dressing for summer, hibernating animals refusing to sleep, migrating birds staying put; the warm winds blowing in from the Azores all mean that unless there is a cold snap in the next three weeks this January will be a record breaker.


The same paper reports that finally

Tony Blair broke his 10-day silence on the execution of Saddam Hussein last night, saying the manner in which the hanging was conducted was "completely wrong".
But the taunts the former Iraqi leader endured before his execution, should not "blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people", he said.
"The crimes that Saddam committed does not excuse the manner of his execution but the manner of his execution does not excuse the crimes," he said.

The Indy reports on more bad news for the Pm

From the grave and beyond, Cook swipes at Blair over war

The late Robin Cook's role as the leading parliamentary critic of Tony Blair's drive to war in Iraq will be made plain to future generations by a statement on his headstone
As a final rebuke to the Prime Minister from whose government he resigned over the conflict, Cook's gravestone at Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh carries the legend: "I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of Parliament to decide on war." The quotation, taken from his memoir, Point of Departure, was chosen by his widow, Gaynor, and his two sons, Peter and Christopher.

Staying with the Telegraph

Stop harassing Kate, pleads William

The story taken up by most of the papers

Kate Middleton, the girlfriend of Prince William, was yesterday said to find the sheer number of paparazzi now hounding her both "frightening and upsetting."
As her 25th birthday dawned around 30 paparazzi gathered outside her Chelsea flat, joined by mainstream TV crews as she walked to her car to set off for her job as an accessories buyer for High Street clothes chain Jigsaw.

The Guardian reports that

Tabloids ban paparazzi shots of Kate Middleton

The owner of Britain's biggest selling tabloids yesterday banned the use of paparazzi pictures of Kate Middleton as her lawyers considered legal action over the growing posse of photographers tracking her every move.

The Mirror's front page reveals in an exclusive that

X-FACTOR LEONA: MY FAMILY AGONY

The 21-year-old star is haunted by the deaths of two teenage cousins and an aunt, and the trauma of seeing a third cousin jailed for gang rape.
She said: "I've had some sad things happen in my family and seeing someone you love suffer is the worst thing. But being in such a close family has given me strength in many ways in times of difficulty."

The Sun concentrates on Big Brother on its front page

Jade's fitness secret is fat fib

BIG Brother star Jade Goody BOUGHT her sleek new figure by sneaking to a cosmetic surgery clinic, it was revealed last night.
The gobby cheat, who released a best-selling fitness DVD on Boxing Day, had liposuction to shed pounds of fat and cellulite.

Whilst revealing another more serious fitness scam

'Cripple' runs Marathon scam

A MAN who claimed he was crippled spent 13 years taking disability hand-outs — before being caught when he was pictured running MARATHONS.
Lying Paul Appleby, 47, even completed the London Marathon.
He convinced Department of Work and Pensions staff he needed ROUND-THE-CLOCK care, a WHEELCHAIR, two WALKING STICKS and FRAME.

The Mirror reports from Thailand where,

KATE Moss is probably no stranger to having slimy characters hanging around her.
But the supermodel got stuck with a real reptile of a companion on holiday - as she and junkie fiance Pete Doherty drape a 7ft python around their necks.
The showbiz couple modelled the bizarre hiss and hers snakeskin fashion accessory during a romantic stroll along a beach in the Thai resort of Phuket.

The Guardian is amongst many papers who report from San Franisco

Apple proclaims its revolution: a camera, an iPod ... oh, and a phone

It is the logical synthesis of two of the most ubiquitous pieces of technology.
An sleek black device, almost certain to be found in thousands of handbags and pockets before the end of the year, was seen for the first time yesterday when Apple unveiled its widely anticipated iPhone.
The touchscreen handset will combine internet access and iPod music with a built-in 2 megapixel digital camera and video playback features.
Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, launched what he called a "magic", "super-smart", super-hyped device, which also provides the more mundane functions of the traditional phone.