The conviction of the men accused of the £53m Securitas raid gets much attentio this morning.

The Times leads with

The Securitas heist, the hostages and the missing £32m

Five men face long prison terms when they are sentenced today for staging Britain’s biggest robbery, but almost £32 million of their haul is now beyond the reach of the law in northern Cyprus.
Much of the cash is believed to have been smuggled to the fugitive’s paradise where Sean Lupton — who slipped through the fingers of police investigating the raid — is also thought to be in hiding.
The five were convicted of kidnap, robbery and firearms offences at the Old Bailey yesterday in connection with the 2006 robbery of £53 million from the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. The gang kidnapped the depot manager, his wife and their young child and used them to gain entry. Only £21 million has so far been recovered.

Robbin Hoods says the front page of the Sun

FIVE armed robbers were slammed for their pitiless thuggery after being convicted yesterday of the record £53million Securitas heist.
The masked gang snatched the manager of the depot and forced him to let them in — while his terrified wife and young child had a gun pointed at their heads.

heist money may never be recovered says the Telegraph

Detectives said that their efforts to recover the outstanding £32m would continue, but privately they admit much of the money has almost certainly been laundered abroad or spent by the four suspects who were able to leave the country.
Among them is Sean Lupton, a 47-year-old builder, who police believe is in Northern Cyprus. Mr Lupton was arrested in November 2006 but released on bail and has not been seen since.
Another suspect, Keyinde Patterson, 28, who was also arrested in 2006, is thought to have fled to the West Indies while on bail.


The Mirror leads on the women that

CAN NEVER SLEEP

woman who shopped the £53million Securitas raiders was in hiding last night with a multi-million contract on her head.
Terrified Michelle Hogg, 33, made masks for four of five men convicted of Britain's biggest cash heist yesterday.
She is believed to have been targeted by the raid's Mr Big - currently in a foreign jail - who she can identify.
A detective said: "It'll be a very long time before she can sleep properly at night.

Robbery of a different kind on the front of the Mail

Snouts in the trough continues says the paper

A senior Tory MP who was forced to apologise yesterday after paying his son £40,000 of taxpayers' money in expenses faces a second sleaze inquiry, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Derek Conway already faces suspension from the Commons for handing the cash to his 22-year-old son Freddie.
It was claimed to be payment for work as a parliamentary assistant, when in fact he was a full-time university student hundreds of miles away in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The Guardian reports

Derek Conway paid his son Frederick £45,163, including £10,066 in bonuses, for a contracted 17 hours a week between September 2004, when he began an undergraduate degree at Newcastle University, and August 2007. The MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup will come under further pressure today after it emerged last night that another son, Henry, 25, had previously been employed in his office.

It leads with

UK needs a new terror plan, says Musharraf

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, claimed yesterday that Britain lacked a long-term counter-terrorist strategy and argued that Islamist extremism was a home-grown problem for Britain rather than his country's responsibility.
Speaking before meeting Gordon Brown in Downing Street, and in response to persistent British criticism of his record on counter-terrorism, Musharraf set out the shortcomings he sees in the UK's efforts to deal with militant young Muslims, pointing out that all the July 7 2005 bombers were born in the UK.

The Independent reports that

President Pervez Musharraf has rejected criticism of his record in the US-led "war on terror," and described Pakistan as a "key ally in combating terrorism and extremism" as he emerged from Downing Street talks with Gordon Brown. adding that

The President dismissed British complaints that the Taliban military leadership continued to operate out of the Pakistani city of Quetta.
"We don't accept that at all," he said during a meeting with journalists yesterday morning at the Dorchester Hotel. He insisted that the ousted Taliban leader from Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, "never came to Pakistan. Why would he come here now?" But he added that refugee camps on the border were "safe havens" for Taliban militants, and that he had asked the United Nations to take them back across the border.

The paper leads with the continuing violence in Kenya

'They killed our people, so now we will do likewise. We are just revenging'

On the one side of the road hundreds of angry men had gathered, armed with machetes, clubs and metal poles. On the other, scores of desperate families huddled together. Only a thin line of a dozen or so policemen stood between the hunters and their prey.
"They killed our people," said Francis Mbogo, calmly gesturing with his machete to across the road. "So now we will do likewise. We are just revenging."
Warning shots were fired as the would-be lynch mob surged forward, baying for blood.


Murder gangs go on the rampage in savage day of tribal bloodletting says the Times

The violence has transformed a country once regarded as a haven of stability and economic growth into a cauldron of ethnic tension.

The same paper reports that

Yes, I did it - but all I wanted was a bonus, rogue trader Jerome Kerviel tells police

Jérôme Kerviel, the French rogue trader, was freed on bail last night.

He has admitted that he concealed billions of euros’ worth of secret deals but said that he was acting in his bank’s interest and that others also broke the rules, the chief Paris prosecutor said yesterday.
released after three days in custody as the scandal around the Société Générale bank widened. There were allegations of insider trading and claims that it had ignored a warning from the German Eurex exchange in November that Mr Kerviel had carried out a heavy, suspect trade


'Tesco bomber' jailed for six years after £1million blackmail campaign reports the Mail

A former tax inspector was starting a six-year jail setence last night for waging a £1million blackmail and bomb hoax plot against Tesco.
Philip McHugh threatened to poison food on supermarket shelves with caustic soda before switching to bomb threats.
That led to customers being evacuated from 14 stores one day last July, costing the chain £1.4million in lost business.

The Telegraph reveals that

Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day

Britain is in danger of becoming a "surveillance state" as authorities including councils launch bugging operations against 1,000 people a day.Councils, police and intelligence services are tapping and intercepting the phone calls, emails and letters of hundreds of thousands of people every year, an official report said.Those being bugged include people suspected of illegal fly-tipping as councils use little known powers to carry out increasingly sophisticated surveillance to catch offenders.

Liverpool council bottom of league reports the Guardian

Liverpool - the council which John Healey, the local government minister, said could save its council tax payers more than £100 a year each - was named as the worst financially managed local authority in England by an independent watchdog yesterday.
The Liberal Democrat-controlled authority comes out alongside Southend and the Isles of Scilly as the worst in the country in an analysis by the Audit Commission.

The Independent reports that

Prison study to investigate link between junk food and violence

Some of Britain's most challenging young prisoners are to be given food supplements in a study aimed at curbing violent behaviour.
Scientists from Oxford University say the effect of nutrition on behaviour has been underestimated. They say increases in consumption of "junk" food over the past 50 years have contributed to a rise in violence.
The university will lead the £1.4m study in which 1,000 males aged 16 to 21 from three young offenders' institutions in England and Scotland will be randomly allocated either the vitamin-and-mineral supplements or a placebo, and followed over 12 months.

The lead story in the Express is

SOFT TOUCH BRITAIN

TAXPAYERS are forking out £21million a year to bankroll child benefit for 27,000 youngsters still living in Poland, it emerged last night.
Thousands of migrant workers are now claiming generous cash handouts for offspring left behind in former Eastern Bloc countries.

Many of the papers report that

A DAD was murdered by a mob after asking a neighbour to give back his son’s football, it emerged yesterday.

The Sun tells us

David Martin, 40, was killed when he went to plead with a man who confiscated ten-year-old Jamie’s ball because it rolled into his garden.
Window cleaner David was set upon and stabbed in the stomach with a Samurai sword and beaten with golf clubs, cricket bats and metal poles.


Price of average house 'will fall by £18,500 this year' - that's £50 a day reports the Mail

Neil Woodford, of Invesco, said they are simply too high and the average home will drop £18,500 by New Year's Eve, or £50 a day.
The fall may be much worse in some parts of the country, warned the 47-year-old investment guru, with the biggest losers the owners of new-build flats aimed at buy-to-let investors which he fears are "almost unsellable."

Meanwhile the Telegraph tells us

Britons spend one-fifth of income on homes

British families spent more of their money on their homes last year than at any time in the past 50 years, with mortgage payments, rents and council taxes taking up £1 in every £5 spent.
The finding emerged from a study of the changing face of household spending since 1957, which also showed that the proportion of income spent on leisure had soared while for food it had dropped dramatically

Green cars push gas-guzzlers off the road says the Times

More green cars than gas-guzzlers will be sold this year for the first time as drivers respond to rising fuel prices and environmental concerns.
Sales of new cars in the £300-a-year top road tax band fell last year by 15 per cent to the lowest level on record, according to industry figures obtained by The Times. Sales of low-emission cars in bands A and B — which are either zero-rated for road tax or pay £35 — leapt by 17 per cent.

Finally the Telegraph on the

Oxford pensioner's paintings worth £2.7m

A collection of paintings found in a pensioner's modest house was worth more than £2.7 million.
After Jean Preston died two years ago, two paintings by the Renaissance artist Fra Angelico were found behind the door of the spare room in her two-up, two-down terraced home in Oxford. The works sold for £1.7 million at auction, a record for a sale outside London.
Guy Schwinge, of Duke's auction house in Dorchester, Dorset, said: "Her family told us that there may be some interesting works of art inside her house. That was something of an understatement.