The face of Princess Diana stares out from a number of the papers on the 10th anniversary of her death.

Fittingly the Express finally takes Maddy off its front page to replace it with

DIANA KILLED BY FIAT DRIVER SAYS POLICE CHIEF

THE driver of a mystery white Fiat Uno was responsible for Princess Diana’s death, claims the detective who led the inquiry into the crash that killed her.
Jean Claude Mules, who ran the initial French investigation, said his officers found compelling evidence that the car carrying Diana and Dodi Fayed collided with the Fiat seconds before it crashed.
If officers had been able to trace the driver they would have “had their killer”, he added. As Britain today marks the 10th anniversary of Diana’s death, Mr Mules’s comments will re-ignite anger that the Fiat Uno driver has never been traced.

10 years on Princes give their tributes says the Telegraph

Princes William and Harry will today deliver heartfelt tributes to their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales in a service marking the 10th anniversary of her death.The princes, who were 15 and 12 when they walked silently behind her coffin, have taken joint charge of the service and will give personally chosen readings to a worldwide television audience. but adding


The Sun also leads with Diana

The man who buried Diana

Ten years on, as the world remembers Diana’s tragic death, former soldier Nigel Enright recalled the grief that day of Princes William and Harry — then 15 and 12 — and their father Prince Charles.
Nigel was selected to be one of a bearer party who carried Di’s coffin to her last resting place on an island at her family’s Althorp estate in Northants in 1997.
Breaking his silence for the first time, he recalled: “I couldn’t help seeing her sons’ faces. That’s a memory that will never leave me. And Charles too, it was unbelievable. It was the greatest and saddest honour I have ever had.”

The Telegraph reports

10 years on Princes give their tributes

Princes William and Harry will today deliver heartfelt tributes to their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales in a service marking the 10th anniversary of her death.The princes, who were 15 and 12 when they walked silently behind her coffin, have taken joint charge of the service and will give personally chosen readings to a worldwide television audience.

But adding

A YouGov poll commissioned by The Daily Telegraph shows that "respect" for the Royal Family has fallen sharply in the past decade from 64 to 49 per cent. But it reveals that 89 per cent of people questioned knew exactly where they were when they heard the princess had died.

Empty seats at service show scars of Diana’s life have not all healed says the Times

The most poignant sight at today’s service to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, will be the empty seats.Most prominent among the missing will be the Duchess of Cornwall, who will spend the day with members of her family at Raymill House, Wiltshire, the marital home she held on to after her divorce and which she now uses regularly as a bolt hole from the strains of royal life.

Elsewhere a mixed bag of headlines for the papers.

The Guardian leads with

The looting of Kenya

The breathtaking extent of corruption perpetrated by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi was exposed last night in a secret report that laid bare a web of shell companies, secret trusts and frontmen that his entourage used to funnel hundreds of millions of pounds into nearly 30 countries including Britain.
The 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll, seen by the Guardian, alleges that relatives and associates of Mr Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of government money. If true, it would put the Mois on a par with Africa's other great kleptocrats, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.

which shares the front page with

MoD denies deal over withdrawal from Basra

British forces have released more than two dozen Iraqi prisoners over the last three months in the run-up to their now imminent withdrawal from the UK base at Saddam's Hussein's former palace compound in Basra, though the government denies doing a deal with Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army to stave off last-minute attacks.
The Ministry of Defence yesterday would say only that 26 unnamed men had been routinely released into Iraq state custody since May "because a significant criminal case was built against them". What happened to them subsequently was "a matter for the Iraq authorities". Some of the 26 have been released on bail, some freed due to insufficient evidence and some are still in custody pending trial.

The Times reports on the

Vaccine warning as measles cases triple

Parents are being urged to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella jab before the start of the new school year after an unprecedented surge of measles cases was recorded over the summer holidays. says the paper


Adding that

The Times has learnt experts fear that hundreds of thousands of children returning to school as early as next week may cause the highly infectious disease to spread. Despite this the Government has ordered no extra stocks of the MMR vaccine and doctors may run out if they face a sudden rise in demand

The Mail saying that

This is the worst outbreak since the controversial MMR vaccine was introduced in 1988.
Take-up of the triple jab - which also protects against mumps and rubella - plummeted to 80 per cent after Dr Andrew Wakefield claimed it was linked to autism and bowel problems.

It leads though with an exclusive


Middle-class pensions slashed as pay out becomes postcode lottery

Middle-class earners were dealt a new blow to their hopes of a comfortable old age yesterday.
The pensions industry announced a scheme to set retirement payouts according to postcode. It means those who live in apparently more prosperous and healthy areas of the country would receive less generous pension payments than those in less affluent districts. Those who live in leafier postcodes would be paid less every year because of an assumption that they are healthier and will live longer.

The Independent updates us on its campaign against bank charges

£2.6bn bank charges payback for 3.8m customers

In a dramatic victory for The Independent's six-month assault on the charges, an estimated three million people have obtained a full or partial refund from their bank or building society.
The figures come from a YouGov poll which found that more than one third of customers had been charged fees since 2001. Refunds averaged £685. One in 20 bank customers had been billed more than £2,500. Applying the figures to the general population, the price comparison website uSwitch said its research showed that 3.8 million current account customers would have received refunds with a total of £2.6bn.

Meanwhile the paper reports that

Brown urged to call autumn poll to quell referendum calls

Some Brown advisers are pressing the Prime Minister to seek his own mandate from the voters in October to head off demands by MPs in all parties for a referendum on a new governing treaty for the European Union. One Labour source yesterday said: "Europe is now a factor in the election decision."

Vaz to Gord: 'EU must hold poll' reports the Sun

LABOUR’S former Europe Minister Keith Vaz last night joined the mounting clamour for a referendum on the re-jigged EU Constitution.
He called on Gordon Brown to stage a decisive once-and-for-all ballot on Britain’s future in Europe — at the same time as the next election.
In an open letter to The Sun, pro-EU Mr Vaz added that the Government had to “trust the people”. He said a public vote would “settle the Europe question for a generation”.

The Telegraph meanwhile leads with the latest political polls which show

Tory blow in polls fuels election speculation

The survey shows Labour maintaining an eight-point lead over the Tories as Mr Brown enters his third month as Prime Minister.
Despite Conservative hopes that Mr Cameron would be able to gain ground once Mr Brown took over as leader, the poll puts Labour on 41 per cent (unchanged since July) with the Tories on 33 per cent (up one point).
The Liberal Democrats are down two points on 14 per cent.
If replicated at a general election, the results would give Mr Brown a Commons majority of more than 100 – up from 69 now.

There is much reporting of the aftermath of the prison officer strike

Jail dispute set to spread to other public sector unions despite talks reports the Guardian

More strikes by prison officers look inevitable in the wake of the government's response to this week's wildcat action. The justice secretary, Jack Straw, is due to meet union leaders today for "meaningful talks", but both sides appeared headed for a confrontation which could spread to other public sector unions.
Gordon Brown yesterday made it clear that the government was not prepared to put economic stability "at risk" by changing the way in which the 2.5% pay increase is being implemented in stages. "We have succeeded in tackling inflation and having a stable economy because of discipline in pay over the last 10 years," said Mr Brown. "That discipline will have to continue."

The pay rules are tough and you must be disciplined, Brown tells the unions is the headline in the Times

Mr Brown’s words were aimed at workers across the public sector and were intended to bury any lingering hopes among unions that he would soften the hawkish stance on pay settlements he adopted throughout as Chancellor in order to buy their support.
They follow a flurry of renegotiated pay settlements in which ministers have agreed to raise pay rates over the 2 per cent threshold for some of the lowest-paid health workers, civil servants and local government employees, although in each case the overall settlements remained within the limit.


MUM STABBED 20 TIMES SAVING HER TOT reports the front page of the Mirror

The extraordinary details of Tuesday's brutal gangland hit in Bishop's Stortford, Herts, were revealed to the Mirror yesterday. One of the hitmen who carried out the gangland triple murder refused to shoot a young mother and her daughter, insisting: "I didn't come to kill women."
Mum Clare, 23, was in a bedroom at boyfriend Matthew Cowell's house with her three-year-old Angel when the two assassins burst into the suburban semi.

The killers then stormed upstairs - to find Clare, Angel and Keith's sister Christine, 54, cowering in the bedroom. After a brief argument, the other man then pulled out a knife and launched his frenzied attack on Clare as she bravely flung herself across Angel in a desperate bid to protect her.
Clare miraculously survived despite suffering more than 20 wounds.

The Telegraph reporting that

Triple killings over debt of hundred pounds

Last night, detectives said they were making "good progress" finding the killers. A source said: "Drugs is a line of inquiry we are looking into. It's one of many lines of inquiry."
The police are hunting two Asian men in their late teens or early 20s seen fleeing the house in a small red vehicle and heading towards the M11 at around 9.45pm. One of the men is believed to have fired shots at all five adults in the house.



Dad's moving poem to murdered Rhys reports the Mirror

The father of murdered Rhys Jones has written a poem about his son playing football in heaven.
The moving verse imagines the soccer-mad 11-year-old joining a team of legends including George Best, Dixie Dean and Bobby Moore.
Stephen, 44, promises his son he will one day bring his boots and join him in "God's First Eleven".
He wrote the poem after Rhys was shot dead by a gunman on a BMX bike in the Fir Tree Pub car park as he walked home from football practice.

The Guardian as does many of the papers reports that

Divorces down to record low but is it love that's keeping couples together?

The number of divorces in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since 1984 amid signs that changes in legal rulings and publicity surrounding big divorce settlements are encouraging couples to stay together.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics indicate that 132,562 couples divorced last year, a 6.5% drop from 2005 and the third successive annual decrease. The divorce rate, calculated per thousand married men and women, also fell to 12.2, the lowest for 22 years.

The Times reports on the

Paedophile kept a video library of his 87 attacks on young girls

A former bank manager who videoed his sex attacks on children as young as three was jailed for life yesterday.
Anthony Barron, a volunteer treasurer for the Scouts, was convicted of 89 offences after a nine-year campaign of abuse against 11 children. Judge Julian Hall, sentencing the 54-year-old grandfather at Oxford Crown Court, said the offences were “as serious as I think I have ever come across”.

Paedophile's ex-wife: I'd slit his throat says the Mirror

after Anthony Barron was found guilty of 89 horrific offences, his ex-wife Christine said: "If he had touched my children I would slit his throat. I wouldn't even bat an eyelid - quite happily. That's the way I feel. He just disgusts me."

One of those stories in the Mail which reports that

Police pays £4,000 to the boy dumped in litter bin by officer

A police force has paid out thousands in compensation to a teenage boy who was dumped into a rubbish bin by an officer.

The plain-clothed constable hoisted Anop Singh, 15, over his shoulder and put him feet-first in the bin.
The incident, which was triggered by an exchange of words between the boy and officers, was captured on a mobile phone video by one of Anop's friends.
The teenager threatened to sue the Metropolitan Police and claimed other youths bullied him afterwards, branding him "bin boy".

Staying with the same paper it reports that

Four-year-olds 'fret for months about starting school'

Researchers say exposure to such prolonged stress could saddle children with long-term health problems.
And the stress could be rubbing off on the youngsters from over-anxious parents, according to the experts behind the government-funded report.
While pushy parents have long been blamed for burdening their offspring with high expectations, the claim that children as young as four could be suffering is a worrying development.




Primary school pupils fail to grasp three Rs reports the Telegraph

Standards among seven-year-olds in the "three Rs" have got worse or stalled, with just one in eight children mastering basic writing skills.Official figures show that the number of pupils meeting standards for writing has fallen for the second successive year while there were no improvements in the number of seven-year-olds attaining standards in maths, reading and science.

US college reacted too slowly to gun massacre says the Guardian

The president of Virginia Tech, Charles Steger, last night rejected calls to resign after an official report criticised the college authorities for having been slow to react during the massacre in April that left 33 students dead.
The report, published yesterday, questioned why police and staff failed to issue a warning between the shooting of two students and, three hours later, 31 others, including the killer, South Korean Seung-Hui Cho. A vague email was sent out two-and-a half hours after the first shooting.
The report said: "Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference. The earlier and clearer the warning, the more chance an individual had of surviving."

Outrage over portrait of Bin Laden as Jesus Christ reports the Indy

Two entries in an Australian religious art competition – one depicting the Virgin Mary wearing a burqa, the other showing Osama bin Laden in a Christ-like pose – were defended by their creators yesterday.
Priscilla Brack, who created a "double vision" print fusing the images of Jesus Christ and Bin Laden, urged people to refrain from knee-jerk condemnation. Critics assumed that she was drawing similarities between the two bearded figures, she told ABC radio. "But I could actually be saying that it's a juxtaposition of good and evil, which I see as the base level reading of that work."

To the Express which tells us

SUMMER 2007 'COULD BE WETTEST EVER'

This summer is likely to be the wettest since UK rainfall records began in 1914, the Met Office said.
Provisional rainfall figures up to August 28 show that 358.5mm of rain has fallen in the UK, just above the previous record of 358.4mm in 1956.
If the figure is confirmed when all the weather stations send in their data, it would make this summer the wettest on record.
"These figures confirm what most people have already been thinking - this summer has been very wet and very disappointing for most," said Keith Groves, the Met Office's Head of Forecasting.


It's a golden delicioussssss says the Sun

A GREEDY garden snake tries to gobble up a goldfish FOUR times its width after slithering into a pond.
The snake, nicknamed Sid, has been menacing fish in a couple’s garden for the last two years.
Now Valerie Bell, 60, and husband Raymond are appealing for help to get rid of him. Valerie, of Ashford, Kent, said: “Sid is always there — it’s beyond a joke. We don’t want him. Maybe the RSPCA could help.”


Finally the Indy reports that

Britons lead Europe in passion for ready meals

Considering the ever growing success of television food programmes and the country' s current restaurant boom you might have thought that Britain was finally turning away from its reputation as Europe's culinary pariah.
But more British adults, it seems, are turning to easy to prepare ready meals than ever before making Britain the largest consumer of microwave meals in Europe. According to research, record numbers are shunning family meals and the joys of food preparation in favour of food that needs only a few minutes of microwave magic.