S.O.S.: headlines this mornings Independent



Pacific islanders battle to save what is left of their country from rising seas



Veu Lesa, a 73-year-old villager in Tuvalu, does not need scientific reports to tell him that the sea is rising. The evidence is all around him. The beaches of his childhood are vanishing. The crops that used to feed his family have been poisoned by salt water. In April, he had to leave his home when a "king tide" flooded it, showering it with rocks and debris.
For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a daily reality. The tiny South Pacific nation, only four metres above sea level at its highest point, may not exist in a few decades. Its people are already in flight; more than 4,000 live in New Zealand, and many of the remaining 10,500 are planning to join the exodus. Others, though, are determined to stay and try to fight the advancing waves.





In fact none of the papers can agree on this mornings main topic



Huge rise in allergy sufferers but too few specialists is the main story in the Times



The number of patients suffering from serious allergic conditions has risen by more than a quarter in four years, but there is a serious shortage of specialists to treat them, The Times has learnt.
Experts call upon the Government today to take immediate steps to combat the “massive epidemic” of severe allergic conditions, which can be fatal in the worst cases.
A report submitted to the Department of Health of data from GPs’ surgeries shows that by 2005 an estimated 12.2 million people in England had been diagnosed with an allergy-related illness such as asthma, eczema, allergic rhinitis, peanut allergy or anaphylaxis, the most severe form of allergic reaction.



Asda, Primark and Tesco accused over clothing factories says the Guardian



Britain's second largest supermarket chain last night launched an investigation into allegations that workers who make its clothes in Bangladesh are being forced to work up to 80 hours a week for as little as 4p an hour.
Asda, one of three major discount clothing retailers accused of breaching international labour standards, said it would audit its suppliers in response to a report in today's Guardian into the pay and conditions of Bangladeshi garment workers who supply British companies.Employees of factories making clothes for George at Asda, Tesco and Primark said their wages were so low that, despite working up to 84-hour weeks, they struggled to provide for their families. There were also reports of physical and verbal abuse by supervisors and of workers being sacked for taking sick leave.



An old topic returns to the front of the Mail



Bins: Even MPs are in revolt



Fortnightly rubbish collections have been branded an unworkable mess likely to increase fly-tipping, confuse the public and provoke protest riots.
An influential committee of MPs says councils have "blundered" into scrapping traditional weekly rounds and there is no evidence that the change has done anything to increase recycling.
The MPs say town hall chiefs are baffling families with different systems of recycling and they should consider increasing collections, not cutting them.
The report from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee is the first official verdict on fortnightly collections since the Daily Mail launched its campaign to keep the weekly bin round.



Meanwhile the Telegraph reports



Afghan casualty rate 'at level of last war'



The casualty rate in the most dangerous regions of the country is approaching 10 per cent. Senior officers fear it will ultimately pass the 11 per cent experienced by British soldiers at the height of the conflict 60 years ago.The rise is partly driven by a tenfold increase in the number of wounded in action - those injured, but not killed - in the past six months as fighting in Afghanistan has intensified.

TESCO 'BOMBS' BLACKMAIL is the front page of the Mirror

POLICE ordered Tesco bosses to immediately evacuate 14 stores after a series of chilling letters claimed bombs had been planted in them.
The sinister messages were sent to police stations and the stores themselves - along with a demand for millions in ransom.
Shoppers and staff were evacuated from the stores and surrounding roads were sealed off after the messages were received at lunchtime on Saturday.
But a painstaking search by bomb experts and forensic officers found no trace of suspicious devices. Detectives now believe the scare was a massive hoax designed to panic Tesco bosses into paying up.



Tories hoping the Boris factor will spike impact of Labour’s leap in polls says the Times



Twenty contenders who have applied to be the Tory candidate for London mayor will know today whether Boris Johnson has entered the race at the eleventh hour – probably to dash their hopes.
David Cameron, who was hit yesterday by a poll giving Labour its biggest lead since he took over, would probably welcome the intervention of his colourful, albeit gaffe-prone, higher education spokesman.



One of the problems facing the future major is



Tube firm awaits ruling on plea for £400m bail-out reports the Guardian



The dispute over a multibillion-pound programme to overhaul the tube network before the 2012 Olympics will escalate today. The company in charge of the work, Metronet, has asked for £400m to continue and has been awaiting a decision on a crucial cash injection from a government watchdog.
Without the money, Metronet faces insolvency. That would prove a severe embarrassment to Gordon Brown, who initiated the deal that handed control of the renovation work for the underground to a private company.



Meanwhile the Indy reports that



'Brown bounce' raises prospect of snap election



Election fever could be increased as private talks are opened today between the Labour leadership and MPs at Westminster over the party's preparations for the general election.
The prospect of a snap election was increased by two weekend polls which showed that the change of prime minister has given Labour a "Brown bounce" after the departure of Tony Blair. Labour has a seven-point lead over the Tories, and David Cameron's leadership of the Conservative Party has stalled.
Labour victories in the two by-elections on Thursday could reinforce the message to Mr Brown that an early election could guarantee him another five years in No 10, rather than delaying for another two years.

TORY CANDIDATE HATES POLITICS says the Mirror

THE Tory candidate in a key by-election had "no interest in politics" just days before he was selected, it emerged last night.
Tony Lit, 34, is battling to win Ealing Southall, West London, for the Tories on Thursday.
But the millionaire businessman was facing huge embarrassment yesterday after it emerged that in June he gave £4,800 to Labour before then joining the Tories.
Mr Lit also attended a fundraising dinner where he was photographed with wife Mandy meeting Tony Blair last month.

The Express meanwhile leads with

BROWN'S £20BN RAID ON YOUR SAVINGS


GORDON Brown is planning a multi-billion-pound raid on Britain’s savings to pay for Labour’s mishandling of the pensions crisis, it emerged last night.
Treasury civil servants want to seize up to £20billion locked in the savings plans of millions of hard-working Britons.But financial experts warned the plan risked being a repeat of Mr Brown’s infamous £5billion-a-year raid on pensions in 1997 – subsequently blamed for the collapse of hundreds of company final salary pension schemes.



According to the Guardian



Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran



The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."



Meanwhile the Times reports



Bush on notice to start planning withdrawal from Iraq



Two of the party’s most respected and influential figures, Senators John Warner and Richard Lugar, said that Iraq’s divided Government was unlikely to make any political progress this year and that Mr Bush had to start planning a change of course now. The senators, the party’s leading authorities on military issues, have proposed legislation requiring Mr Bush to give a plan to Congress by October 16 that would seek a withdrawal of combat troops starting as early as January 1.



Boy, 14, describes how religious teachers gave him suicide mission reports the Independent



Fourteen-year-old Rafiqullah said the men at the Pakistani madrassa showed him and two classmates videos of suicide attackers. They taught the boys to drive a car and let them ride motorcycles. Then they gave Rafiqullah his mission: kill an Afghan governor.
The teenager crossed the border to the Afghan city of Khost, where a man named Abdul Aziz tried to pump up his courage, Rafiqullah said. Aziz gave him an explosives-laden vest, and the teenager confessed his fears. "I said I was afraid to carry out the suicide attack, and Abdul Aziz pointed a gun at me and said 'I'll kill you if you don't'," said Rafiqullah, who was taken into custody.
Declaring the boy an innocent pawn, President Hamid Karzai freed Rafiqullah yesterday. He appears to be at least the third child co-opted by Taliban fighters to carry out attacks since April.



Taliban end Pakistan ceasefire as bomb attacks kill up to 38 says the Guardian



Suicide bombers struck yesterday in two areas of north-western Pakistan, killing up to 38 people, while Taliban militants broke a 10-month-old peace deal with the government along the Afghan frontier.
The militants said the ceasefire agreement was being terminated in North Waziristan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida operate, because government forces had attacked the militants, failed to pay compensation to those harmed and created problems at checkpoints.
"The peace agreement has ended," Abdullah Farad, a militant spokesman, told journalists in Peshawar. He said the Taliban chief in North Waziristan, Maulvi Gul Badahar, made the decision at a council meeting after the government had failed to abide by its demand to withdraw troops from checkpoints by 4pm yesterday.



Saudis prepare to behead teenage maid reports the Telegraph



The imminent execution of a teenage maid in Saudi Arabia drew fierce criticism yesterday and provoked condemnation of the kingdom's prolific use of capital punishment.
The case has brought fresh attention to the draconian Saudi criminal justice system which is expected this year to set a new record in its use of the death sentence.Human rights campaigners yesterday urged the authorities not to behead a 19-year-old Sri Lankan maid found guilty of killing a baby in her care. According to the Saudi authorities, Rizana Nafeek admitted strangling the four-month-old boy while feeding him with a bottle. But Nafeek, whose job was not meant to include child care, has denied making any such admission. She claims the child had begun to choke before losing consciousness in spite of her desperate efforts to clear his airway.



According to the Mail



Jailed addicts to get safer syringes to inject heroin - paid for by the taxpayer



Convicts are to receive Government help to ensure they can inject heroin safely inside jail.
Under the dramatic relaxation of drugs policy, criminals will be given taxpayer-funded disinfectant tablets to clean their syringes.
The Conservatives said the 'outrageous' decision effectively condoned drug use by inmates, who are supposed to be given help to quit Class-A substances



The Independent carries the story that



Hain to coax lone parents and over 50s back to work



Lone parents are to be targeted with "tough love" as part of a radical overhaul of the welfare system aimed at getting 2.3 million people to take jobs and move off benefits.
A Green Paper delivered to the Cabinet last week by Peter Hain, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, will lay the foundation for the implementation of David Freud's report. It recommended that lone parents should be required to seek work if their youngest child is 12 years or over.
At present, lone parents do not have to make efforts to find a job until their youngest child is 16. Mr Freud, an investment banker who reviewed the Government's welfare-to-work strategy last year, said the threshold should be reduced to 12 years for the youngest child as part of efforts to get 300,000 more lone parents into work.

The Sun leads with an exclusive

SOCCER ace Thierry Henry has told pals he quit Arsenal for Barcelona to get away from “everything English — including my wife”.
Henry, 29, walked out on Croydon-born model Claire, 27, days after joining the Spanish giants last month. The pair, who have a two-year-old girl, will divorce, The Sun can reveal.
And Henry is living the single life following his move to Barcelona — and his bitter marriage break-up.

And another exclusive

Eaten alive by Costa hols bug

A BRIT holidaymaker told yesterday how she was left fighting for life after getting a flesh-eating bug from a Spanish hotel pool.
Special constable Leyna Casey, 24, decided to treat boyfriend Chris Gray to a cheap all-inclusive week in Benidorm for his 30th birthday.
But it turned into a nightmare when she used the hotel’s pool.
She is believed to have been infected by the Streptococcus A bacteria through a sore caused by her FLIP-FLOPS. That then developed into necrotizing fasciitis which eats away at the flesh.





North Pole swimmer's unique body heat trick says the Telegraph



A City lawyer, dressed only in swimming trunks, a cap and goggles, spent nearly 19 minutes yesterday in the coldest water ever endured by a man who lived to tell the tale.Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first person to complete a long distance swim at the North Pole.
The feat is not only unprecedented in physical terms. It also provides compelling evidence that global warming is breaking up the Arctic ice cap.
The adventurer, the only man to carry out endurance swims in all five oceans, swam 1km (more than half a mile) along a temporary crack in the ice in 18 minutes and 50 seconds



The Indy gives more bad news on the summer



St Swithun's legend predicts more rain to come



After some of the soggiest weeks on record it would have taken little short of a miracle to get through St Swithun's day without recourse to an umbrella.
And yesterday - true to form for Britain's monsoon summer of 2007 - the heavens opened.
Many in the South-east awoke for the annual feast day dedicated to the former Bishop of Winchester, who is venerated for restoring a broken basket of eggs, to the sound of torrential rain and violent thunderstorms.
Worst affected was the South-west where 25mm of rain fell in a few minutes in parts of Devon.

Cut out 'n keep indoor summer says the Sun

BRITAIN’S summer may be an utter washout with weather from ICELAND about to hit us next.
So The Sun has come up with a few ideas to enjoy the season INDOORS, below.
They’ll come in handy after yesterday — predicted to be the one hot day of summer — was a washout. A Met Office forecaster said there was “no end in sight” to the rain.
He said the freak conditions were due to an area of low pressure — which normally lies between the north coast of Scotland and Iceland — but was now off central Britain.