Nearly all the papers lead with the shooting of the 11 year old boy in Liverpool

Gang warfare goes public says the Guardian

The apparently random shooting of 11-year-old Rhys Jones on a Liverpool street yesterday exposed a barely concealed culture of violent gangs glorying in crime.
As residents of Croxteth Park, campaigners and politicians denounced the senseless murder of a shy, polite boy who lived for football, Gordon Brown described the killing as a "heinous crime that shocked the whole of the country". He added: "The people responsible will be tracked down, arrested and punished." Merseyside's chief constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe, described the murder as the most shocking crime in his 20 years' service and said Rhys was probably Merseyside's youngest-ever gun crime victim.

The short, happy life of Rhys Jones says the Times

When the leavers’ service was held a few weeks ago at Broad Square Primary School in Liverpool, 11-year-old Rhys Jones and his friends were told that a world of opportunities was waiting for them. They were urged to grab those opportunities with both hands.
But for Rhys they disappeared in a pub car park on Wednesday night when he was shot three times in the neck and left to die in his mother’s arms. Last night, a weeping Melanie Jones spoke of her bewilderment at her son’s killing.


Boy's mother appeals for shooting witnesses reports the Telegraph

Melanie Jones, sitting next to her husband Stephen, said that the family was utterly devastated at their loss and spoke of how she had cradled her dying son her in her arms.
The couple said that their son had never been in a gang and did not even know what one was.

The Mirror quotes from Rhys

My son was a baby,he was only 11,shot in the back of the neck from behind,only 11

Mum Melanie, 41, sobbed as she said: "My baby was only 11. He didn't deserve this. He was shot in the back of his neck from a shot from behind. My baby."
Dad Stephen, 44, said: "We are devastated. We've lost our world. And the world has lost a good guy. People are saying to me 'Wrong time, wrong place'. But it shouldn't be a case of wrong time, wrong place. It shouldn't happen in this country."



'Please catch my baby's killer': says the Mail

Wiping away tears, 41-year-old Mrs Jones said: "Someone knows who did it and I know people must be frightened, but please come forward.
"It could be their son, their brother next time because it will happen again if he is not caught."
In a direct appeal to the killer, she pleaded: "Give yourself up."


It's time for all of us to say ENOUGH says the Sun

Adding that

A TOP cop told yesterday how 11-year-old Rhys Jones’s cold-blooded execution was: “The most shocking event in my 20 years of service.”
Merseyside Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe said there was “no suggestion” the football-loving lad was involved in any sort of crime.



Its leader saying

That little boy’s killing is a defining moment for our country, perhaps even more so than those of poor Damilola Taylor and James Bulger.
For if there is one shred of hope from it, it is that it may force us to consider how we have gone so badly wrong and how we can put things right.
It is time for the Government and the judiciary to radically rethink the derisory sentences handed down to young criminals. It is time for police to go back on the beat and for the Home Office to sanction a huge increase in their numbers.


There is much analysis of the story

Croxteth caught in crossfire of rival gangs reports the Telegraph

The smart middle-class streets are where people move up and away from the depressing, boarded-up terraces nearby; a haven of self respectability.
But in recent months residents have felt increasingly under siege, caught in the crossfire of rival estates and rival gangs. They said incidents of anti-social behaviour have shot up, and, according to the local residents' association, recent requests for a police presence were rebuffed.

Younger offenders, younger victims - a grim trend reports the Guardian

The gun crime figures have been falling in England and Wales over the past 18 months but that recent decline follows an eight-year rise in firearms offences since the ban on handguns introduced in 1997 following the Dunblane massacre.
So far this year, eight children have died after being shot, with Kamilah Peniston, 12, in Manchester the youngest before Rhys Jones's death in Liverpool this week. The other six victims, all teenagers, died in shootings in London.
Even though the number of people shot dead dropped from 77 in 2004-05 to 49 the following year, the police were saying they were worried about the rise of a teenage gang and gun culture.

Its leader proclaims

Death on the streets

there stands a dispiriting and dangerous shift in parts of inner-city gang culture. Guns, and the killings that accompany them, are becoming part of the life of some young people.

Weapons crime and its deadly link with youth culture must be defeated says the leader in the Times


The Independent asks

Moral panic and a return to gesture politics

Will the smiling face of 11-year-old Rhys Jones replace that grainy image of two-year-old James Bulger as a cipher for all that is wrong with British childhood? Fourteen years separate the two deaths. But yesterday it was as though the greater part of Britain had been waiting for just such an atrocity to top off the latest bout of hand-wringing about our young people. The blamelessness of the victim, the innocence of his pursuit, the youth and seeming cold-blooded purpose of the inevitably hooded killer all added up to a picture of debased childhood, rooted in a degraded society.

Fury as paedophile escapes jail reports the Mirror prominently

A judge who spared a paedophile jail for a string of sex attacks was branded "pathetic" yesterday by the pervert's own sister.
Senior Jehovah's Witness Michael Porter, 38, attacked boys for 14 years.
He admitted 24 charges of gross indecency and indecent assault on 13 youngsters - one only 18 months old.
But Judge Tom Crowther gave him three years' community rehabilitation after being told he had had therapy and was a changed man.


The Independent chooses a different lead story

For the first time, Britons' personal debt exceeds Britain's GDP

Britons have racked up so much debt on loans and credit cards that the total borrowed now exceeds the entire value of the economy, new research shows today. The financial consultant Grant Thornton is forecasting that gross domestic product (GDP) will hit £1.33 trillion this year, less than the £1.35trn which was outstanding on mortgages, credit cards and personal loans in June.

And the Express continues with its Maddy coverage

Mum's fury at you killed her slur as the paper reports that

The mother of Madeleine McCann faced more anguish last night after a TV reporter was accused of hinting that she may have killed her own daughter.
Kate McCann was said to be “horrified and deeply upset” by the remarks from Sandra Felgueiras, one of Portugal’s top presenters.
Kate and her husband Gerry were so incensed that they were ready to sue to protect their reputations.


Republican senator urges Bush to start Iraq exit by Christmas reports the Guardian

A senior Republican senator, John Warner, last night urged President George Bush to begin bringing troops back from Iraq by Christmas, as US intelligence agencies published a bleak assessment of the chances of progress in the country in the next 12 months.
Mr Warner, who has recently returned from Iraq and is widely respected by his Republican colleagues, went much further than in June when he first broke ranks with Mr Bush over the war. After a meeting with White House aides, he told reporters: "We simply cannot, as a nation, stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action

Saving Private Hubbard: soldier sent home after his brothers die reports the Times

A family’s last remaining son was returning home from Iraq last night after his two brothers were killed in action, in a case strikingly similar to Saving Private Ryan, the Second World War epic by Steven Spielberg.
Jeff and Peggy Hubbard lost their youngest son, Nathan, 21, in Iraq on Wednesday - nearly three years after a roadside bomb killed his older brother, Jared, 22, near Fallujah in October 2004.
Now their third and eldest son, Jason, 33 - who joined the Army at the same time as Nathan so that he could protect him in Iraq - is heading back to California under military regulations that are designed to spare parents losing all their children to war.


Meanwhile the Independent asks

Was George Bush right about Vietnam?

There have been surreal moments aplenty in the presidency of George W Bush. Few, however, can match his invocation of Graham Greene in defence of America's policy in Iraq. Where Bush is the most faith-driven of leaders, so unafflicted by self-doubt, Greene is the mouthpiece par excellence of seedy ambiguity, tattered faith and human frailty.

Yesterday's Gcse results get a lot of coverage

Grammars beat independents to top GCSE results reports the Times

State grammars edged ahead of independent schools in GCSE performance this year, as national figures showed that nearly a fifth of entries achieved an A or A* grade for the first time.
The proportion of entries achieving A* to C grades rose from 62.4 to 63.3 per cent. However, the overall pass rate, measured by a minimum of a grade G, slipped slightly from 98.1 to 98 per cent, suggesting that while schools may have succeeded in lifting D-grade candidates to a C, they have done less well with the least able.

The Telegraph reporting that

Examination boards said that the shift was down to a drop in grades in the private sector - coupled with year-on-year rises by state schools.
They insisted the biggest increases were seen in comprehensives.
The results re-ignited the debate on the future of selective education the UK as grammar school supporters called for both main political parties to "think again" about their opposition to them.


Brown faces Labour revolt over EU referendum says the same paper

A "hard core" of at least 40 Labour MPs is poised to issue the Prime Minister with an ultimatum to re-open talks on the treaty or concede a referendum. They are preparing a 15-point plan to put to Mr Brown calling for the Brussels blueprint to be radically amended to end the need for a British referendum

Tories to fight the election on fixing our broken society reports the Mail

Tackling social breakdown will be firmly at the heart of the Conservatives' General Election manifesto, David Cameron revealed yesterday.
He will fight Gordon Brown over solving the grave social problems blighting Britain, including spiralling knife and gun crime, the rise of lawless gangs and yobbish behaviour.
Making clear the Tories would woo voters on social issues rather than the economy - the party's traditional front line - he adapted Bill Clinton's famous phrase to explain: "It's society, stupid."


According to the Guardian

BA staff could face extradition to US after $300m fine for price fixing

Senior British Airways staff under criminal investigation for price fixing face the threat of extradition to the US under a controversial treaty, it emerged last night. The justice department in Washington was set to publish the names of 10 former and current BA employees as criminal suspects under investigation for running a fuel surcharge cartel after a judge confirmed a $300m (£151m) fine for the world's third-largest airline.

The Times is reporting that

Children taken from parents and adopted ‘to meet ministry targets’

Record numbers of young children are being taken from their parents and adopted - sometimes unjustly - to meet government targets, it is claimed today.
Each year some 1,300 babies under a month old are placed in care before adoption, compared with 500 when the Government came to power, BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts claims today.
The programme is told that there are now more than 100 cases of possible miscarriages of justice in which children have been forcibly or unjustly adopted.

The Telegraph reports that

Paxman attacks TV's 'obsession with ratings'

As public trust in broadcasters reaches an all-time low following scandals involving the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, the presenter will make a "plea for the soul of the medium".
He is expected to use the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival to attack the industry's obsession with money and its fixation with "maximising the number of viewers in order to maximise the return".
The Newsnight presenter will also condemn the absence of any "prevailing sets of beliefs" about what television is essentially for.

The Guardian meanwhile reports on the same story

BBC scandals stoking crisis of distrust, say Paxman and Marr

The former BBC political editor Andrew Marr, meanwhile, told the Guardian the recent loss of viewer confidence was a more serious threat to the BBC's long-term future than the Hutton affair sparked by claims that the government "sexed-up" its dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
"Hutton ... was a confrontation between the BBC and the government which ... the government won, resulting in enormous institutional and personal damage inside the BBC ... This argument is more important in the sense that it is between the BBC and its owners and users."

Sex in your sixties - too cringemaking or a life-enhancing treat? says the Mail

Passion in old age is seen by many as unwelcome, or just unedifying. But as the Mail reported yesterday new research suggests that many pensioners enjoy a vigorous love life well into their eighth decade.
A study of 3,000 men and women aged 57 to 85 revealed that 73 per cent of people aged 57 to 64, and over half of those aged 65 to 74, have active love lives.

The Guardian reports that

World faces threat from new deadly diseases as scientists struggle to keep up, say experts

The world will face a new deadly threat on the scale of Aids, Sars and Ebola within a decade, the world's leading authority on health said yesterday, as it warned that diseases were spreading more quickly than at any time in history.
New diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate, of one a year, and are becoming more difficult to treat, says the World Health Organisation's annual report. It paints a bleak picture of future health threats, with science struggling to keep up as diseases increasingly become drug resistant.

Many of the tabloids report on

Tom Kat's twin bed

The Mirror telling us that

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes sleep in separate bedrooms - because the Mission Impossible star snores, it was claimed.
An insider said: "Katie says this way she can get her beauty sleep."
Tom, 45, has rooms in the north wing of their rented Hollywood estate and Katie, 27, in the south.
The insider told a US magazine: "At first it was because Katie is Catholic and they were only dating.


Finally the Mail reports on the case of

Two female sunbathers prosecuted for flashing their breasts at CCTV camera

When Abbi-Louise Maple and Rachel Marchant saw a CCTV camera trained on them as they sat on a beach, they had a mischievous idea.
The 21-year-olds lifted their tops and flashed their bare chests at the camera before collapsing in a fit of giggles.
The young women's friends thought their prank was hilarious.
The CCTV operator, however, didn't see the funny side and called the police.
Minutes later, the two blondes were arrested, questioned and then charged with committing an act outraging public decency - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of six months prison or a £5,000 fine.