The Telegraph leads with
Reid on the rack as new crises hit Home Office
The Home Secretary was confronted with the consequences of his prison policies when a sex offender escaped custody because the jails are full. He also had to contend with a new study showing that 25 convicted murderers had killed again after leaving jail. On top of that, crime figures published yesterday recorded a big rise in muggings carried out at gunpoint and more armed burglaries.
Mr Reid's biggest embarrassment came when a judge in Wales made clear he was following his advice to send fewer people to jail.
Derek Williams faced a lengthy prison term after admitting to downloading nearly 200 pornographic images of children on to his computer.
John Rogers QC, the senior judge on the North Wales circuit, said a jail sentence was necessary as a deterrent to others whose activities "cause great harm to children". But he added: "As of yesterday, I have to bear in mind a communication from the Home Secretary.
The Sun,continuing its themew from yesterday,again uses the headline
BRAINLESS giving three points on its front page,
Paedo Free thanks to Reid
Robberies hit all time high
We find him a prison ship
The Guardian reports
Williams from Penygwdwn, North Wales, last night admitted that he was "lucky to be out", but said the judge was "only doing his job". He told BBC News: "You cannot blame the judge for what he has done. His hands are tied." David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said last night: "We now have a situation where sentences are being dictated by the prison capacity and not the severity of the crime."
Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "The government has failed in its duty of care to protect Britain from serious and violent offenders, and in particular paedophiles. Was this the government that came into power with the slogan 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?' This government has been anything but that."
The Mirror describes the incident as
JOKE JUSTICE (EXCEPT IT'S NOT VERY FUNNY, IS IT?)
The Guardian top story returns to the Alexander Litvinenko story with its front page claiming
UK wants to try Russian for Litvinenko murder
The British government is preparing to demand the extradition of a Russian businessman to stand trial for the poisoning with polonium-210 of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Senior Whitehall officials have told the Guardian that a Scotland Yard file on the murder which is about to be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service alleges that there is sufficient evidence against Andrei Lugovoi for the CPS to decide whether he should face prosecution.
The Times meanwhile also changes tack leading with
'Underclass' of drivers costs lives and millions
The number of people not paying their road tax has almost doubled in the past two years creating a “motoring underclass” of two million drivers who can escape speeding fines, parking penalties and driving convictions.
Figures released by the Department for Transport yesterday show that 2,193,000 owners failed to pay vehicle excise duty last year, compared with 1,240,000 in 2004.
This means that 1 in 15 of the 33 million vehicles on the roads is untaxed, despite a high-profile campaign to reduce evasion. The DfT’s figures do not include the tens of thousands of vehicles with cloned numberplates or false foreign plates. The DVLA estimates that 80 per cent of untaxed vehicles have no insurance and 70 per cent of the people who drive them have criminal records. Uninsured motorists are ten times more likely to be convicted drink-drivers.
The Mail returns to the honours for cash inquiry claiming on its front page,
Cash for honours and No10's deleted e-mails
Police investigating the cash-for-honours affair have recovered sensational deleted e-mails from Downing Street computers.
They have unearthed potentially vital evidence that key figures close to Tony Blair openly discussed the possibility of Labour donors being rewarded with peerages.
Many of the e-mails were not voluntarily disclosed and may have been deliberately concealed, police sources say.
The Times reports from Lebanon
Students die as political clash flares into rioting
Beirut was under military curfew last night after reports that four students had been killed in violent street protests between supporters of the Lebanese Government and the radical Shia Hezbollah movement.
The rioting came hard on the heels of a general strike called by Hezbollah two days earlier. Last night one of the deaths was confirmed.
In the Indy Robert Fisk reports from the same country
Robert Fisk: Money can't close the sectarian divide in Lebanon
If only money could buy peace - or was the £4bn handed out to Lebanon's Prime Minister in Paris yesterday supposed to help him defeat America's Hizbollah enemies in Beirut's increasingly savage street battles?
For, even as President Jacques Chirac of France was taking the applause for leading Lebanon's debt conference - the US itself pledged £405m, Lebanese troops were fighting to control the worst sectarian fighting so far in the capital. At least four students, one of them a Sunni Muslim government supporter, were killed, apparently by gunfire.
At one point yesterday, thousands of Hizbollah and Amal Shia Muslims were taken by truck from the southern suburbs to the campus of the Lebanese Arab University in Tarek el-Jdeideh. There, students - the Sunnis siding with the government, the Shias with the Hizbollah - were fighting in the lecture theatres. Many local Sunnis feared that the Shias were going to drive them from their homes, and Lebanese troops had to evacuate Sunni students in their own army trucks.
The Telegraph reports that
More US troops for Afghanistan
The Guardian on the same story says
The White House announced a major shift in its strategy towards Afghanistan yesterday that will see more aid and military help for the country after four years in which it has suffered from Washington's overwhelming focus on Iraq.
Facing failure in Iraq, where violence is worsening, the US is anxious to avoid a similar catastrophe in Afghanistan.
Billions of dollars are to be pumped into Afghanistan to help build up the army and for reconstruction projects such as roads, water, schools and clinics.
About 3,200 US troops in Afghanistan from the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division who were due to return home are to remain for a further 120 days to help Nato counter an expected Taliban spring offensive.
With the French Presidential elections approaching the Times reports
Calls for Sarkozy's head over spying row
Nicolas Sarkozy faced calls last night to step down immediately as France’s Interior Minister over a secret police inquiry into an adviser to Ségolène Royal, his rival for the presidency.
Mr Sarkozy stands accused of asking les Renseignements Généraux (RG), the undercover police, to investigate the private life of Bruno Rebelle, a former Greenpeace official, who has joined the Socialist campaign team. In particular, they were asked to focus on his divorce.
Big Brother returns to the front of the Mirror this morning with the story
BB PHONE VOTE FIASCO
With just days to go before the end of the current show the paper tells us
CELEBRITY Big Brother bosses have made an amazing new blunder with tonight's double eviction phone vote.
Channel 4 - which yesterday boasted that sickening racism on the show had boosted ratings - has lost a fortune after the fiasco with top-price vote lines. Results have been scrapped and fans will be offered refunds.
Viewers wanting to EVICT two housemates were shown 50p-a-time phone numbers to ring.
But the words alongside the number of favourite Shilpa Shetty, above, wrongly stated that voters should dial it to SAVE her.
The Express tells us
In a statement, Endemol – makers of the show – said any unclaimed money made from votes so far would be given to charity.“At the end of Celebrity Big Brother on Wednesday there was an error in the on-screen information about eviction votes in relation to details for Shilpa,” admitted the production company.“This was a genuine mistake which was due to human error. We apologise to viewers and feel the best way to rectify it is to cancel the vote so far and re-open the voting again.”
Its lead this morning announces
Prescriptions free...
But only if
you live in Wales
The paper reports
ANGER was growing last night over Britain’s two-tier health service after prescription charges were abolished in Wales.Anyone registered with a Welsh GP will get their drugs and medical supplies free from April 1 but patients in England and Scotland will continue to be charged £6.65 for each item.There is already resentment over the decision by the Scottish Parliament to provide free care for the elderly while councils in England are warning services will be slashed and fees raised.
Finally a number of the papers carry the story of Sookjo te baby monkey who the Sun tells us
has been abandoned by her mother - because of her chronic HICCUPS.
The tiny Colobus started the noisy spasms within days of being born on December 30.
Staff at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall said she was gulping down milk from her mum Sierra too quickly and making the ’hic’ sound after every feed.
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