The Mail

Calls for inquiry after policeman on bail for murdering his wife kills mother-in-law and then himself

He was awaiting trial for murder after strangling his wife then faking her suicide.
He had already tried to kill himself in custody, telling guards: "I just want to go to sleep."
Yet despite objections by the Crown Prosecution Service, police inspector Garry Weddell was allowed out on bail - to kill again.
He blasted his mother-in-law, who was to give evidence against him, with a shotgun before turning the weapon on himself.

The Mirror features the same story on its front page reporting

Crazed cop Garry Weddell planned to hang himself in shame after being accused of strangling his cheating wife Sandra.
His desperate plot was foiled when custody officers found a length of flex wrapped round his ankle.
But incredibly, despite the risk of him cheating justice, the 45-year-old Met inspector was granted £200,000 bail. And on Saturday the final grim act of the cruel drama was played out.

One hundred Labour MPs rebel over police pay says the Telegraph

Officers will hold last-ditch talks with Jacqui Smith to avert next week's protest march by up to 20,000 officers.
But more than 200 MPs, most of them Labour backbenchers, have signed the Commons motion protesting at Miss Smith's decision to withhold three months' backdated police pay, effectively reducing this year's award from 2.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that

Police to use text message tactics to snare rape suspects

Police and prosecutors in rape cases are set to experiment with controversial techniques designed to make suspects incriminate themselves through phone calls or text messages.
The tactic, used by investigators in the United States, involves women sending texts or making calls to their alleged attackers to see if they can extract an admission of guilt.
Lawyers and detectives believe the approach could be vital in helping to boost the stubbornly low rape conviction rate in England and Wales, where barely 6% of cases reported to police end in conviction.

The front page of the Times reports that

Teachers told not to promote A levels

Teachers are to be banned from encouraging their pupils to study A levels rather than the Government’s controversial new vocational diploma qualifications under legislation that is going through Parliament.
A clause in the Education and Skills Bill, to be debated in Parliament today, says that schools will be forbidden from “unduly promoting any particular options” to teenagers seeking advice on courses.

Ministers have missed 122 of 346 Whitehall performance targets says the Independent

The Government has failed to hit more than 100 of the performance targets it set itself as part of its drive to improve public services and the state of the nation. Research by The Independent shows that 122 of the 346 targets fixed for the 17 Whitehall departments are being missed, according to the Government's figures. Some 224 have already been met or are on track. adding
Promises that have not been kept include raising standards in English and maths; improving the asylum system; raising the level of employment among disadvantaged groups and improving air quality. Others where the Government admits to "slippage" include pledges to cut crime; reduce child poverty; tackle health inequalities and social exclusion and reduce teenage pregnancies.

The Sun carries the interview with the Prime Minister choosing to focus on

Brown's blitz on blades

COPS will be ordered to prosecute anyone carrying a blade in a massive crackdown on Britain’s knife crime epidemic, Gordon Brown declares today. In an exclusive Sun interview, the PM said those with knives in “hot-spot” areas would no longer escape with cautions.
He also wants computer game designers to stop their characters using blades.
And he is looking at a TOTAL ban on the most lethal hunting knives.


The Times reveals

Britain joined plot to overthrow a Communist Italian government

Britain plotted to support a coup d’état in Rome in 1976 because of grave fears that the Italian Communist Party would win the election and form a government, according to declassified documents.
The papers, uncovered by an Italian researcher at the National Archives at Kew, reveal a flurry of anxious correspondence between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its diplomats, as well as with Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, European officials in Brussels and even the Vatican in the months before the election.

To foreign news and the Indy leads with

Bush talks the talk on human rights. Now he must walk the walk

President George Bush is under pressure from human rights groups to use his visit to Saudi Arabia today to seek the release of the pioneering blogger Fouad al-Farhan, who has been jailed without charge for more than a month.
The human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, are urging the president to raise Mr Farhan's case with King Abdullah today. They also want him to appeal for the release of an Egyptian blogger, Abdel Karim Suleiman, the first to be jailed in Egypt, when he meets President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm-el-She-ikh on Wednesday. The Egyptian blogger is serving a four-year sentence for insulting President Mubarak.

Bush urges Arab allies to confront Iran, 'the world's leading sponsor of state terror' says the Guardian

President George Bush yesterday ratcheted up US rhetoric over Iran, lambasting it as "the world's leading sponsor of state terror", and urging America's closest Arab allies to confront it "before it is too late".
Giving the only formal speech of his seven-country Middle East tour in the United Arab Emirates, the president accused Tehran of backing Shia groups in Iraq, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Rudy Giuliani may regret late show says the Telegraph

Rudy Giuliani, one of the biggest names in American politics and for months the clear Republican front runner, is fast becoming the forgotten presidential candidate.While his rivals have trudged doggedly through the snows of New England and the Mid-West, the former New York mayor and hero of the September 11th attacks, has instead headed towards the beaches of Florida.

From the Democratic side,the Times reports

Barack Obama 'distortions' are bringing race into campaign, protests Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has accused Barack Obama's campaign of “deliberately distorting” her views on Martin Luther King and implied that her rival, seeking to become America's first black president, was injecting the issue of race into an already highly charged election contest in the Deep South.
Her comments came after days of bitter controversy in which some black leaders have claimed that she had diminished Dr King's role in the Civil Rights struggle, a particularly incendiary subject in the run-up to the South Carolina Democratic primary on January 26, in which about half the voters are expected to be black.

The Northern Rock crisis get a fair amount of coverage this morning

New boss in place for a nationalised Northern Rock as options run out says the Guardian

The government was last night finalising contingency plans to nationalise Northern Rock after it appeared rebel shareholders in the stricken bank were close to wrecking ministers' hopes of a competitive private sale.
Ron Sandler, a senior banker and former adviser to prime minister Gordon Brown, confirmed at the weekend that he will become the boss of Northern Rock if it is taken into public ownership. Sandler, who was credited with rescuing the Lloyd's of London insurance market a decade ago, likened himself to a batsman waiting to take to the cricket field.

£50bn bill to 'nationalise' Northern Rock says the Telegraph

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will use a report by the advisers Goldman Sachs as "cover" for the Treasury to take over the bank.

The Hain controversy continues to rumble on

Cameron demands Peter Hain 'explain or quit' over shadowy think-tank dodgy donations says the Mail

David Cameron said yesterday that Peter Hain should quit if he cannot answer questions about the funding of his failed bid for the deputy leadership.

The Times reports that

Gordon Brown heaped praise on Peter Hain last night, confirmed he would not sack him but suggested for the first time that his fate as Work and Pensions Secretary and Welsh Secretary was not wholly in his hands.

Meanwhile the Mirror reports on

Tories panic over funding blunders

David Cameron was last night plunged into a sleaze row by revelations that top Tories did not properly declare donations which could run into millions of pounds.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne admitted he failed to record gifts of almost £500,000 in the Register of Members' interests.
The money was funnelled through Conservative HQ accounts but earmarked for Mr Osborne's office.

UK bins £8bn of food each year, study claims reports the Telegraph

And most of the 6.7 million tons of food we discard from our homes each year - enough to fill Wembley Stadium eight times - could have been eaten, according the Government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap). And the startling figures refer only to waste from households - when waste from businesses is included the numbers will be considerably higher.

Made in China, recalled in Britain says the Guardian

The number of dangerous or faulty products recalled in Britain hit an all-time high last year, with an influx of cheap goods from China to blame, according to a survey published today.
The number of consumer products recalled amid health and safety fears rose by 22% in 2007. The number of lines taken off the shelves, including food and drink and pharmaceuticals, rose to 192, City law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain said.

The Sun reports that

GIRLS are starting to hit puberty at the age of THREE.

Shocked doctors blame hormones in food and water for some British toddlers showing signs of breast growth.
Other pre-school youngsters even experience periods that normally start in their teens – and have temper tantrums just like adolescents.
The phenomenon is feared to have become more common since the 1990s – with doctors having to give increasing numbers of tots jabs to keep puberty at bay


The winter weather is reported on

Flooding fear after parts of Britain are hit with a month's rainfall in 24 hours says the Mail

Britain was on flood alert last night after some areas were subjected to a month's rainfall in 24 hours.
Roads and railways were brought to a standstill as water gushed into homes and offices and motorists were left stranded.
More than a month's rainfall drenched parts of the country in the space of 24 hours, with some sporting fixtures having to be called off over the weekend as snow hit.
The Environment Agency still had around 20 flood warnings in place this afternoon, many around the south west area of England.

Town's last fishing boat fights tide and time reports the Telegraph

There used to be so many fishing boats in Great Yarmouth that locals boasted you could walk across the harbour from deck to deck without getting your feet wet.But the 1,000-strong fleet, once the biggest in the world, has over the last century dwindled down to just one.
Thanks to over-fishing and European quotas Richard and Jason Clarke are now the last full-time fishermen in the Norfolk town - and their 32 foot boat the Eventide, the last commercial trawler.

The Guardian tells us

Injured Atlantic sailor calls his local pub in Sussex for help

Six hundred miles off the coast of Bermuda, British sailor Alan Thompson stumbled aboard his new yacht and badly injured his pelvis. In considerable pain, the 61-year-old Thompson picked up his satellite phone and phoned a friend - the landlord of his local pub in Fishbourne, West Sussex.
The call triggered a rescue alert, coordinated between US and UK coastguards, which ended more than five hours later with Thompson hauled on to an oil tanker and his yacht, Padolu, left abandoned to the waves. Roger Pocock, 62, licensee of the Bull's Head, heard from his friend early on Saturday evening. "We received a call from him saying he was in trouble. He said he'd been on deck and taken a fall.

Finally the Sun reports on the latest effects of global warming explaining

Today, in Day One of our Green Week, British polar explorer David Hempleman-Adams, 51, tells in his own words how he came face to face with how global warming is rapidly changing our world ...

David reports

I first went to the Arctic in 1983. The changes in one generation have been phenomenal. Many people will have heard the old saying about selling fridges to the Eskimos. Well, people are now selling air-conditioning units to them.
They need them in the summers because their homes, heavily insulated from cold, are now stiflingly hot thanks to climate change.