A mixedbag of headlinesin the papers this morning.

The Times leads with the story of

Havoc on deadline: the Great Tax Crash

The Treasury is to review spending on government IT projects in an effort to halt a series of scandals as Gordon Brown’s ambitions to computerise public services were dealt another blow yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of people were given an extra 24 hours to file their returns online after the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) computer filing system crashed hours before the annual deadline. The website failed to work for nearly six hours on the biggest day of the tax year, denting Mr Brown’s plans to make all taxpayers file online within four years

Tax return website crashes on D-Day says the Telegraph

The Government’s online tax return system crashed yesterday, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded and unable to file their tax returns on time.

It leads with

'Lotteries should be used for school selection'

Lotteries should be used to award pupils places at schools across England under plans that would see the abolition of grammar schools, a Government-backed report has recommended.Admissions rules should be introduced to make the system fairer to pupils from poor backgrounds, the researchers said.
Lotteries would be unpopular with parents, many of whom have paid large premiums on their homes to make sure they are in the catchment area of a good school.

Politics leads the Guardian with the story that

Ministers tell PM: we must wake up to the Tory threat

Labour modernisers, with the support of a group of cabinet ministers, will today press Gordon Brown to offer a radical reform programme, warning Labour is now engaged in a serious fight for the centre ground with a new, more socially liberal Tory party.
They warn Labour cannot afford to be seen as an "out-of-touch statist leviathan" and must show which direction it wants the country to take.
A statement drawn up by the Progress thinktank goes on to address one of the key questions for Labour since Brown took over, that of the legacy of Tony Blair. It urges "a future agenda which is post-Blair, not anti-Blair; building on the achievements of the past decade, not running away from them".

More politics in the Mail which reports that

Lib Dem MP storms out of Commons debate calling minister an 'a***hole'

Greg Mulholland stormed out after making the remark during a fiery debate about the problems of funding hospices.
The party health spokesman was furious after Labour frontbencher Ivan Lewis refused three times to let him intervene in the discussion.Yesterday Commons Speaker Michael Martin was investigating the extraordinary incident.
He could force Mr Mulholland to apologise for breaching strict rules governing Parliamentary behaviour which prevent the use of offensive language and it continues with more allegations on Derek Conway

Disgraced Tory Derek Conway halved his secretary's salary to just £7,875 while paying his sons and their friend tens of thousands in overtime and bonuses.
Hardworking constituency secretary Lisa Rayson was told by the senior MP that he could not afford to pay her £15,000 wages because money was tight.
Yet weeks before her salary was slashed in June last year, Mr Conway gave his son Freddie a 15 per cent bonus of £1,765 - for doing virtually nothing - according to documents obtained by the Daily Mail.

MPs face tougher rules as Commons expels Conway says the Independent

MPs are likely to be able to carry on employing members of their families at the taxpayers' expense in spite of the scandal over the disgraced Tory MP Derek Conway, who was expelled from the Commons for 10 days yesterday.
House of Commons rules are expected to be tightened to require MPs to declare payments on a public register if they employ spouses or children on their expenses, which many do. Spot checks could also be introduced, after Downing Street said the idea was "interesting".

The Guardain reports that

One of Bin Laden's top six aides is killed in suspected US strike

A senior al-Qaida figure in Afghanistan, described by Western officials as one of Osama bin Laden's top six lieutenants, has been killed, it was reported yesterday.
Abu Laith al-Libi was "martyred along with a group of his brothers on the territory of Islamic Pakistan" according to a statement on Ikhlaas.org, a website that often posts communiques from Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Libi's death may be linked to what is suspected to be a US missile strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region earlier this week, in which 12 people - several Arabs and central Asians, as well as local Taliban members - are believed to have died. Locals told reporters that they heard US Predator drones flying in the area shortly before the explosion at a compound, and a Pakistani daily newspaper, The News, reported that the attack was targeted at Libi and another senior figure, Obaidah al Masri.

The Telegraph reports on the Democratic debate

Barack Obama 'winner'

Hillary Clinton's vote to authorise the Iraq war more than five years ago came back to haunt her last night as her rival Barack Obama scored crucial points against her in a high-stakes Democratic debate.

Obama bagman is sent to jail over $3.5m payment by British tycoon reports the Times

An undeclared $3.5 million (£1.8 million) payment from a corrupt Iraqi-British businessman has landed Barack Obama’s former fundraiser behind bars.
The payment, disclosed in court papers, is the first time that Mr Obama’s long-serving bagman Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Syrian immigrant to the United States, has been linked to Nadhmi Auchi, the Iraqi-born billionaire who is one of Britain’s richest men. The relationship is a potential embarrassment for Mr Obama, who has made his opposition to the Iraq war a central plank of his campaign.

Iraq's revival boosted as oil production rises reports the Times

Oil production in Iraq is at its highest level since the US-led invasion of 2003, reaching 2.4 million barrels a day, thanks largely to improved security measures in the north.
The country’s Oil Ministry will shortly invite international oil companies to bid for contracts to help Iraq to boost output at its investment-starved “super-giant” oilfields. Production is expected to pass the prewar level of 2.6 million barrels by the end of the year, and Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, told The Times that he expected production to reach six million barrels a day within four years.

The Independent reports how

Rift Valley mayhem follows murder of opposition politician

It was a day that started promisingly. Kofi Annan had led the first full session of negotiations between Kenya's feuding government and opposition. The atmosphere was described as "serious" and the six negotiators had started to make some headway. But by nightfall, violence had broken out once again in towns and cities across the country. The trigger: the killing of an opposition politician, the second in three days.
David Too, a member of parliament for the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), was shot dead by a police officer along with a female companion, Eunice Chepkwong, as he was driving towards Eldoret in western Kenya.

It leads for the second day running on

Save Pervez! Global protests to save Afghan student from death
sentence

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has been inundated with appeals to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death after being accused of downloading an internet report on women's rights.
While international protests mounted over the affair, with the British Government saying it had already raised its concerns, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Kabul, demanding Mr Kambaksh's release.

Survival of early babies 'doubles' says the Telegraph

A study at one of Britain's top neonatal units found that one third of babies born between 22 and 25 weeks' gestation survived in the early 1980s but this had risen to 71 per cent by the late 1990s.
The biggest improvements were among the 24 and 25-week babies.

The Guardian reports that

Home Office defends plans to send back child asylum seekers

The Home Office is to start the forcible removal of lone child asylum seekers, despite fears that many will be sent back to war zones where their safety and welfare cannot be guaranteed.
The Home Office insisted yesterday that unaccompanied children under 18 would only be sent back to "safe environments", but ministers believe that "it cannot be right that individuals should be allowed to remain in Britain" after refusing help and assistance to go home voluntarily.

Most of the papers report thate

Killer policeman was given bail despite breaching his conditions, court papers reveal

Killer policeman Garry Weddell was granted freedom two months before his shooting spree despite breaching one bail condition and allegedly breaking another, it emerged yesterday.
Within months of convincing magistrates that he posed no threat, the Metropolitan Police inspector killed his mother-in-law before shooting himself while on bail charged with his wife's murder.
The scandal surrounding the case deepened after bail hearing transcripts were made public for the first time by the Judicial Communications Office. says the Mail

An exclusive in the Times

Papers show Ken Livingstone used public servants in vote battle

Ken Livingstone’s campaign instructed public servants to write articles in support of his last reelection as Mayor of London in a breach of rules forbidding political abuse of taxpayers’ cash.
Documents passed to The Times prove that staff paid for by public money were told to carry out campaign work during office hours. One e-mail to the mayor’s former senior adviser on Asian affairs, Atma Singh, sent at 9.30am, explicitly asks that he write two articles in support of Mr Livingstone by noon that day.

The Abyss claims the front page of the Mirror

Tormented Britney Spears was rushed to a mental unit yesterday in a meticulously planned military-style operation.
Police spent days plotting the move with her parents and shrink amid fears the star - who had not slept since Saturday - might kill herself.
She is being forcibly held under a 5150 order, used when a patient is deemed "as result of mental disorder, a danger to others...or herself".

Pyschotic Brit is sectioned says the Sun

The star, who suffers from bipolar disorder, is said to have flown into a “frightening manic phase” and threatened her mother and pals who begged her to get help.

Paparazzo quits in protest at Britney 'hounding'reports the Guardian

When paparazzi have a crisis of conscience over the wellbeing of their celebrity prey, events have clearly reached a serious level. So it is with Britney Spears, the troubled pop star and America's favourite tabloid fodder, who was back under psychiatric evaluation in a Los Angeles hospital last night after the latest in a series of highly publicised meltdowns.
As the singer's family and manager bickered over the right to direct her treatment after a court-ordered commitment into mental health care, a British photographer who has quit the chasing media pack warned the hounding could kill her.




Beckhams failure to getinto the England squad dominates the backpagesand the front page of the Sun

Becks in Drop strop

DAVID Beckham was blasted for pulling out as host of a glitzy charity bash last night after being axed from the England squad.
Angry organisers of the fundraiser for cystic fibrosis kids accused the sulking star of leaving them in the lurch.


Fabio Capello leaves no room for sentiment says the Telegraph

The circus has left town, the boot camp has arrived. England's tough new coach, Fabio Capello, last night decreed that his team would not be shaped by celebrity or sentimentality but by those old-school criteria of form, fitness and an individual's suitability to chosen tactics. David Beckham, stranded on 99 caps, has finally become unfashionable

David Beckham vows to bounce back says the Mirror

David Beckham has vowed to fight his way back into the England squad and cement his reputation as the comeback kid.
England boss Fabio Capello phoned him late on Wednesday night and told him - in Spanish - he was not in the squad to face Switzerland next week and his 100th cap must wait.
Beckham flew back to the US yesterday morning under orders from LA Galaxy boss Ruud Gullit and will train with his club today to underline his determination to win back his England place.

The Sun continues its campaign against crime

THREE criminals are being freed from jail every HOUR to ease overcrowding, shock figures revealed last night.
The Justice Department admitted 16,197 have been let out in the first six months of Labour’s early release scheme.
It also emerged yesterday that FIVE children aged under 16 were shot dead last year compared with none in 2006.

Police must spend 13 HOURS filling in ten forms before they can catch a thief says the Mail

Police must spend more than 13 hours filling in forms if they want to track a serial burglar planning a raid, it was revealed yesterday.
Officers also face a maze of red tape to do something as simple as walking past the home of a suspected drug dealer to check for expensive cars.
The shocking extent of the bureaucracy involved in mounting a police surveillance operation has been uncovered by the Conservatives.


The Mirror reports

Remote Scottish island of Eigg gets mains electricity for first time

A tiny Scottish isle ushers in a bright new future today - as it gets mains electricity for the first time.

The 87 residents of Eigg in the Hebrides have until now used small, unreliable household generators - a century after the rest of Britain joined the national grid. Thrilled Saira Renny beamed: "I'm going to have an electricity party. I will be literally coming out of the dark ages.
"Mains electricity is going to revolutionise life here."
Locals are often left in the dark when the diesel or gas in generators runs out.

Margaret Thatcher named as 'Great Briton' reports the Telegraph

Conservative leader David Cameron heaped praise on the former Prime Minister in a sign that he is determined to be seen as her heir.
At a prestigious dinner in her honour she was awarded the Morgan Stanley Great Britons Lifetime Achievement Award at the Guildhall in London.


Finally the Guardian reports

How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.
According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.