Bernard Matthews faces ‘illegal’ imports inquiry
Is the headline in the Times
Bernard Matthews is under investigation by the Government amid concerns that the company has imported poultry from inside an avian flu exclusion zone in Hungary, it emerged last night.
The company, Britain’s largest turkey producer, is also being investigated for breaking EU hygiene regulations by leaving processed poultry outside sheds on its food processing site at Suffolk, where a lethal strain of bird flu was detected last week, according to senior Whitehall sources.
Bird flu plant imported turkey from Hungary
Headlines the Telegraph
Investigators announced their findings as the latest DNA tests showed that the viruses that caused outbreaks in Suffolk and last month in Hungary are probably identical. It also emerged yesterday that three other turkey houses at the farm tested positive for H5N1.
Fred Landeg, deputy chief veterinary officer at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, confirmed today that the Government investigation is no longer centred on the theory that wild birds brought the virus from mainland Europe.
The Mail also leading with the story
Bird flu: Is Bernard Matthews to blame?
Also telling us that
Separately, it has emerged that muck and waste, including carcasses, from the Suffolk factory farm sheds where the virus was found may have been left out in the open in the days before the bird flu was diagnosed.
If so, birds and animals would have been able to spread the virus into the wild bird population and beyond.
An exclusive form Robert Fisk is on the front of the Independent
Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions
For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.
The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.
Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters
Staying in Iraq,the Telegraph reports from the North of the country
Iraqi Arabs revolt over cash offer to quit Kirkuk
Ethnic tensions in Kirkuk have escalated after Arabs were offered payments to leave the strategic Iraqi city before a referendum that is expected to approve its incorporation into Kurdish territory.
Kirkuk's oil wealth makes the city of 700,000 one of Iraq's greatest strategic prizes. Well before the fall of Saddam Hussein, Kurds declared their intention to claim a city they describe as their "Jerusalem".
The Guardian reports from Palestine where
Rival Palestinian factions agree to form coalition government
Rival Palestinian factions meeting for crisis talks in Saudi Arabia last night agreed to form a coalition government, but there was no immediate guarantee that it would be enough to lift an international boycott on the Palestinian government.
After two days of talks in Mecca, the leaders of Hamas and Fatah agreed a list of ministers for a new national unity cabinet and called for a halt to factional fighting that has claimed more than 100 lives in the occupied territories in recent weeks. The deal appeared to have averted a slide into civil war. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, described it as a new era.
It leads though with a breakthrew in medicine
The brain scan that can read people's intentions
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future
Both the Mirror and the Sun feature the death Anna Nichole of on their front pages
ANNA NICOLE DEAD
PLAYBOY MODEL COLLAPSES IN HOTEL ROOM says the Mirror
whilst the Sun headlines
Anna: Death of a centrefold, 39
TRAGIC Anna Nicole Smith died last night — without ever getting her hands on a £400million fortune from her late husband’s estate.
The blonde former Playboy playmate, who became a film and reality TV star, collapsed in a hotel suite where she was staying with her boyfriend.
Her lawyer later confirmed she had died. It is thought she had taken an accidental drugs overdose.
She had recently been granted the right to fight for half of her late oil baron husband’s £800million fortune in the US Supreme Court.
The Mirror reports on the comments of one of the victims of the letter bomb attacks
EXCLUSIVE: BRAVE KAREN'S MESSAGE
BRAVE letter bomb victim Karen Andrews yesterday warned her crazed attacker "You will not win".
Karen, 35, spoke out after returning home from 26 hours in hospital where she was treated for shrapnel injuries.
She said: "I hope he or she is caught soon before someone is killed. To put it mildly I'm very annoyed.
"They're not going to take one more second of my life than is necessary. This person isn't going to win."
According to the Times
NHS to export accounting jobs to India
Peter Coates, deputy director of finance at the Department of Health, said that as many as two thirds of NHS accounting and finance functions would be outsourced, with much of the work being done in India.
“I recently gave permission to outsource 60 per cent of the work to India,” Mr Coates told a conference in Bombay. “It could go higher, but the constraint is that we cannot move jobs to India at the expense of shedding jobs in the UK. Politics will be an important factor.”
Most of the papers feature the case of the abuse of a four year old disabled girl
Social workers condemned over parents' abuse of disabled girl
Social workers came under fire yesterday after an investigation into the abuse of a disabled four-year-old girl described by a detective as "one of the worst cases" he had seen.
The girl, who has cerebral palsy, suffered at the hands of her mother, Kimberly Harte, 23, and her boyfriend, Samuel Duncan, 27, from west London, who were yesterday sentenced to a total of 22 years in jail.
The "systematic violence" included pouring boiling water over her hands, ripping clumps of hair from her scalp, repeatedly kicking her in the groin and locking her naked in the lavatory every night, sometimes forcing her to eat her own faeces.
Although the girl was initially removed by Westminster City Council's social services after domestic violence between Harte and Duncan, she was returned home last January despite the concerns of her foster carers. Within four weeks, Duncan broke her arm, an assault that was followed by other sickening attacks.
Reports the Indy
Evil parents get 22 years' jail says the Sun
A SADISTIC couple who tortured their four-year-old disabled daughter were told to “rot in hell” as they were jailed for 22 years yesterday.
A woman in the court gallery screamed the taunt at Kimberly Harte, 23, and Samuel Duncan, 27, after hearing of their campaign of abuse.
As the pair were led to the cells, the sickened spectator yelled: “You bastard. Rot in hell. What have you done to this poor girl?”
According to the Guardian
Big rise in Russian military spending raises fears of new challenge to west
Concerns were growing yesterday over a new bout of east-west confrontation, after Russia unveiled a big increase in military spending in the wake of the American decision to site parts of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.
Russia's hawkish defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, revealed an ambitious plan for a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and possibly a fleet of aircraft carriers. Moscow also intended to revamp its early warning radar system. This major overhaul of Russia's military infrastructure would cost $189bn (£97bn) over eight years, he said, adding that he wanted to exceed the Soviet army in "combat readiness".
ITS NOT OVER YET
BRITAIN was braced for another wintry blast this weekend after the heaviest snowfalls for 10 years brought much of the country to a standstill yesterday.The Met Office last night warned that another “significant snowfall” is set to sweep many parts tomorrow.But as if to underline Britain’s bizarre weather, parts of the West Country yesterday enjoyed blue skies and balmy temperatures. Elsewhere, airports and schools were closed and road and rail traffic disrupted as up to 8in of snow fell, causing drifts 3ft high in places.
The Telegraph reports that
British Gas starts price war with 17pc cut
From next month, the supplier will cut the standard tariffs for gas and electricity by 17 per cent. The changes, which affect 16 million customers, follow months of falling wholesale prices - the price paid by suppliers for gas. They mean that British Gas will go from being the most expensive energy company to one of the cheapest. However, consumer groups criticised British Gas for failing to pass on the full 50 per cent drop in wholesale gas prices and pointed out that the reduction only took gas prices back to the levels of spring 2006.
Finally a story covered in many of the papers is near to the top of the Indies agenda
Branson offers £10m to the person who can prevent the climate change crisis
Sir Richard Branson is raising his game as "saviour of the planet" by announcing a multimillion-pound prize for the best way of removing thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The prize - expected to be in the range of £10m - will go to the originator of the most convincing invention for actively absorbing and storing the principal man-made gas in the atmosphere responsible for global warming.
Sir Richard has drawn up a distinguished panel of judges to oversee the prize including James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia theory; James Hansen, the Nasa researcher who first warned the US government of climate change, and Tim Flannery, the Australian zoologist and explorer
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