Cash for honours: key document names Levy
the paper publishes further details of the communication between Ruth Turner and Jonathon Powell after a judge ruled that as the paper was alreday in print,he would not grant a further injunction.The piece reports that
Detectives are investigating whether Lord Levy, Labour's chief fundraiser, urged one of Tony Blair's most senior aides to shape the evidence she gave to Scotland Yard, the Guardian has learned.
Police have been investigating whether Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, was being asked by Lord Levy to modify information that might have been of interest to the inquiry. Officers have been trying to piece together details of a meeting they had last year. Ms Turner gave an account of it to her lawyers and this has been passed to police.
Judge refuses to gag the Guardian also features on its front page
The judge said the case was finely balanced, but she refused to accede to the attorney's request.
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, said: "The Guardian was today given a significant story about the cash for honours inquiry which we checked both with Lord Levy and with the police. Our story was referred to the attorney general's office, who told us it was "similar" to another story which was the subject of an injunction. We asked to see the court order and were told it was confidential to the parties to the original action.
"The story was well-sourced and clearly in the public interest. In this country there is a well-established principle that the state cannot exercise prior restraint on newspapers. If the attorney general - who may be a player in this action - is seeking to gag newspapers he must give the precise reason for doing so. In the absence of any specific details we decided to publish. "Secret orders and prior restraint on the press have no place in an open society."
GAG EMAIL WAS ABOUT LORD LEVY reports the Mirror
THE email which sparked a probe into an alleged cash for honours cover-up by Downing Street was about Lord Levy, it was revealed yesterday.
But the draft - from No10 aide Ruth Turner to Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell - was never sent.
In the latest twist to the long-running cash-forhonours investigation the Attorney General yesterday partially lifted a gagging order preventing details of the secret memo being made public.
Elsewhere the Independent leads with the headline
Did al-Qa'ida kidnap British embassy staff?
Fears were growing yesterday that the Britons linked to the embassy in Ethiopia who were taken hostage may be the victims of Islamist fighters connected to al-Qa'ida rather than opportunist robbers.
What began last Thursday as a criminal kidnapping has become a matter of national security being dealt with at the highest level.
The full extent of the difficulties facing British authorities attempting to rescue the five men and women began to emerge with growing evidence that they may have been political targets.
Kidnap Britons' cars found riddled with bullets reports the Telegraph
The sight of two bullet-riddled vehicles bearing diplomatic number plates greeted a rescue party yesterday when they reached the village where five Britons disappeared in northern Ethiopia.
The burnt-out hulk of a third vehicle lay beside the dirt road in the tiny settlement of Hamedala, where camel caravans bearing hunks of salt stride through the blistering desert of the Danakil Depression.
The Diana enquiry returns once again to the front pages,the Express asking
Show us Diana's murder letters
Whilst the Mail reports
Diana and the vital questions the coroner has agreed to consider
The Diana inquest will examine sensational claims that she was pregnant on the night she died.
Mohamed Al Fayed has always insisted that the princess was expecting a baby by his son Dodi.
He claims they were murdered in an Establishment conspiracy "masterminded" by Prince Philip and carried out by MI6.
At a preliminary hearing yesterday, the Harrods tycoon was told he must produce witnesses to back up his extraordinary allegations.
It though leads with the headline
Human genes in your food?
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.
The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.
Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.
The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.
The lead story in the Telegraph concerns an IMF report in Britian's economy
Taxes are at highest levels for 20 years
Gordon Brown has lifted the tax burden to breaking point and must slash public spending or risk plunging Britain's national accounts dangerously into the red, the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday.
The alarm was sounded after the level of taxes reached its highest since the mid-1980s.
The IMF urged the Chancellor to cut spending and to make "disciplined choices" in this summer's Comprehensive Spending Review.
For the first time, the Washington-based institution said explicitly that it would be perilous to increase taxes any further, without driving away businesses and putting more pressure on households.
The Times reports more bad news for the Chancellor
Record Tory poll lead as Cameron trumps Brown
The Conservatives now have a record poll lead over Labour and would stretch it even farther if they were facing Gordon Brown or David Miliband. A Populus poll for The Times, taken last weekend, shows that Labour support has fallen this year and the Tories are eight points ahead — equalling the widest gap recorded by Populus.
But, while nonLabour voters are attracted by the idea of a younger alternative to Mr Brown, many voters know nothing about Mr Miliband, the Environment Secretary. The poll suggests that he would do no better than the Chancellor against Mr Cameron’s Tories. Labour led by either of them would lag far behind the Conservatives.
The same paper reveals that
ITV pulls the plug on phone-ins after series of scandals
ITV has suspended all on-air quizzes, contests and votes that use premium-rate phone lines after a series of scandals across the television industry.
The hit show Dancing on Ice is threatened and the controversial ITV Play quiz channel will go blank today as a result of the review ordered by Michael Grade, the ITV boss.
ITV has appointed Deloitte as independent auditors to conduct a review of all premium-rate interactive services in its programmes. The investigation was prompted by revelations of irregularities in phone contests for the ITV1 show Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and an admission that viewers were overcharged by £200,000 for votes during the last series of The X Factor.
The story is the lead in both the Mirror and the Sun
GAME'S UP FOR ITV PHONE-INS says the Mirror
ITV was last night bracing itself for a huge slump in income as all its money-spinning phone-ins were axed after a string of voting blunders and quiz show cons.
Today's editions of This Morning and Loose Women will have no telephone competitions and the screening of Saturday's semi-final of Dancing on Ice was plunged into doubt as bosses pulled the plug on polling lines.
Whilst the Sun tells us
ITV is dancing on thin ice
DANCING On Ice could be frozen off our screens after ITV last night sensationally suspended ALL phoneline and interactive services.
The ice-skating hit, featuring Torvill and Dean, may be pulled off air after new channel chief Michael Grade ordered a huge probe to ensure the broadcaster is “whiter than white” amid a row over TV phone-ins.
The Telegraph asks
Are Putin's agents behind shooting?
Speculation of the involvement of Russian agents intent on silencing opponents to President Vladimir Putin's regime, wherever they may be, has increased with an attempted murder in America and an apparent suicide in Moscow.
On the face of it the two incidents appear to have nothing in common, but Paul Joyal, shot in Adelphi, Maryland, on Saturday, is a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy poisoned with polonium in London last year. And in Moscow, Ivan Safronov, 51, was an ex-colonel and journalist for Kommersant who had irritated the Russian FSB security service with his frequent exposes. He was reported dead yesterday after apparently falling from a fourth floor window of his apartment block on Friday. The shooting of Mr Joyal, 53, was part of an apparent robbery, but law enforcement sources last night said it could merely have been a set-up. Mr Joyal, who struck up a friendship with Mr Litvinenko during visits to London, had recently told NBC's Dateline programme that the Russian's death was an act of "political retribution".
The Guardian reports from Copenhagen where
Tearful protesters fail to save historic centre
Hundreds of tearful and angry protesters gathered outside a youth community centre in Copenhagen yesterday to watch as a hydraulic excavator tore into the building, bringing to an end more than 100 years of political history.
The "Ungdomshuset" or Youth House which once hosted Vladimir Lenin, has been the focus of street riots in recent days following the eviction of squatters from the building which has been sold to a rightwing Christian sect.
The remnants of Sunday's bad weather are reported in the papers,the Times amongst many papers reports on a failed rescue in Cornwall
BBC crew tried to save couple swept from harbour wall
Members of a BBC television crew have spoken of how they fought to save the lives of a man and a woman who were swept to their deaths from a harbour wall.
The pair, who were holidaying in Cornwall, had been walking hand-in-hand along the breakwater at Mullion Cove on the Lizard peninsula when they were hit by a wave on Sunday afternoon. The BBC crew had just arrived at the cove when the sound engineer, Mark Killingback, saw the pair disappear into the sea. He ran to the cliff-top to get a signal on his mobile phone while his colleagues Julian Sturdy and David Viner went to the couple’s aid.
The Mirror reports that
DROWN EVENT WILL GO ON
A TOUGH endurance event for children will go ahead despite the death of a 14-year-old girl in training.
Charlotte Shaw drowned after falling into a rain-swollen Dartmoor river in the lead-up to the 55-mile Ten Tors challenge.
The keen gymnast was hiking with classmates from £2,345-a-term Edgehill College in Bideford, Devon.
Twenty teenagers from three school groups had to be rescued from the moor in the training run in atrocious weather.
But the Army, which has organised the Ten Tors expedition since 1960, said yesterday the event would go ahead as planned in May. An Army spokesman described Charlotte's death as "very sad". He added: "This is the first time a fatality has occurred either in training or during the event."
Charlotte's headmaster Stuart Nicholson said yesterday: "Our hearts go out to her family. We are all shocked by the tragedy and are working to support the pupils and staff in coming to terms with it. The pupil was a delightful member of our school community.
Finally the Sun reports from the ski slopes where
Chills & Kate slope off on hol
PRINCE William and girlfriend Kate Middleton look oh-snow comfortable together on a romantic ski break.
Wills has whisked Kate to Zermatt in the Swiss Alps where the pair, both 24, are staying in an exclusive chalet.
A pal said: “If he’s going to ask her to marry him, as we hope, special trips like this are vital to their relationship.”
They seemed so happy as they shared a moment on the slopes that Sun reader James Cherington just couldn’t resist taking a quick snap.
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