Monday, March 31, 2008


Nearly all the papers carry pictures on their front pages of the carnage that inflicted a Kent cul de sac on a Sunday afternoon

Jet fireball in Surburbia says the Mail

They did not stand a chance as their private jet exploded in a fireball.
Two leading figures in motor sport were among five killed when their Cessna crashed in the heart of suburbia yesterday. Yet the death toll could have been so many more.
While a suburban house hit by the eight-seater plane was wrecked yesterday afternoon, the elderly couple who live there were both on holiday abroad.


Crash pilot died a hero says the Sun

Mike Roberts, 63, used his last moments to STEER his stricken jet away from flats and AVOID 20 youngsters playing in a park.The twin-engined Cessna Citation 501 finally hit one house — which miraculously was empty — and then the garage of another by a field in Farnborough, Kent.


Both the Guardian and the Independent lead with Zimbabwe,

The writing's on the wall says the latter

The writing was on the wall for Robert Mugabe last night. It was pinned to the side of polling tents, posted on school fences and written on the walls of community halls. The election results that Zimbabwe's president had made every effort to rig were coming in against him.
First to go were his chief lieutenants as, one by one, they lost their parliamentary seats.



Whilst the Guardian reports

Mugabe clings on despite election defeat

Robert Mugabe was desperately trying to cling to power last night, despite his clear defeat in Zimbabwe's presidential election, by blocking the electoral commission from releasing official results and threatening to treat an opposition claim of victory as a coup.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said that what it regards as the overwhelming win by its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, is "under threat" despite growing support from foreign monitors for its claim of victory. The party also said it had "security concerns" after a police raid on its election offices yesterday. Tsvangirai made no public appearances, apparently out of concern for his safety


Tension has been mounting in Zimbabwe's capital as the country's election commission refused to announce the results of Saturday's poll, fuelling rumours that President Robert Mugabe had lost despite widespread vote-rigging, and was planning to declare victory regardless.
says the Telegraph

Both the Times and the Express lead with....parking

Put drivers first says the Times

Drivers will be given the benefit of the doubt in disputes over parking tickets that arrive by post, The Times has learnt.
Caroline Sheppard, the chief adjudicator of the new traffic penalties coming into force tomorrow, intends the move to be seen as a tilt towards motorists in their continuing battle with local authorities over parking.
As part of this shift, drivers will also be given new rights to appeal against parking tickets.


Parking fine chaos starts today says the Express on its front page

Motorists face yet more misery from today as a chaotic new system of parking fines comes into force.
Penalties will range from £40 to as high as £120 – rising to £180 for late payers – simply according to where in the country you park.
Drivers can now be fined under one of five different systems, depending on the local council, in a move described by AA president Edmund King as “a fine mess”.


The Guardian reports on

Watchdog's threat to 42-day terror law

The government's own human rights watchdog threatened last night to launch a legal challenge to Labour's plan to introduce a law that would let police detain terror suspects without charge for 42 days.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission says the key part of the counter-terrorism bill goes against human rights law and may breach the Race Relations Act


The Independent meanwhile reveals

The spy writer John Le Carré, the actors Colin Firth and Patrick Stewart, the novelist Iain Banks, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and professor of philosophy A C Grayling are among a group of leading figures from the arts and academia who have written to Gordon Brown to oppose the extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days for terrorist suspects.
On the eve of a key vote on the second reading of the Counter-Terrorism Bill in the Commons, their open letter warns the Prime Minister that "community relations could suffer if the Muslim community appears to be ... targeted for prolonged pre-charge detention".


Gordon Brown's scheme proposes thousands of low-cost homes says the Times

The new homes are proposed as part of a review ordered by Gordon Brown. Under the scheme, dozens of market towns would have communities built next to them large enough to sustain their own shops, pubs and even schools. Planning rules would be also be changed to remove restrictions and allow residences for lower-income families to be built
.

The Telegraph meanwhile reports that Gordon Brown's out of touch

A senior minister has accused Gordon Brown of being out of touch with the concerns of hard-working Britons and said Labour had "failed dismally" to convince people that the country had improved in the past decade.Ivan Lewis, a health minister, said "the Government is losing touch with what fairness means to the mainstream majority who work hard" and urged ministers to address widespread concerns about rising utility bills, petrol prices and council tax.


The Mail reports the comments of another ex minister

MPs claim more taxpayers' money for their second home allowance than necessary because they see the upper limit of £23,000 as a "target to aim for", a former minister has admitted.
Labour's Chris Mullin, a highly respected member of Parliament's standards watchdog, said it was "human nature" that MPs would claim as much as they could get away with.


Whilst the Guardian reports

Crisis Lords meetings over sleaze allegations

A special meeting has been called of the full Lords privileges committee, on which all the peers' party leaders sit. It is due to discuss whether an official inquiry can go ahead into Doug Hoyle's alleged receipt of cash from an arms company lobbyist.
A subcommittee led by Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice, was originally scheduled to meet on Tuesday to try to question Lord Hoyle about a complaint suggesting he could have breached the peers' code of conduct.


T5 continues to make the headlines,the Independent reporting

British Airways' chief executive, Willie Walsh, was forced to repeat apologies yesterday for the continuing disruption to flights from Heathrow Terminal 5.
BA said 400 staff members had volunteered to come in on their day off to sort through the mountain of 15,000 lost items of baggage. Mr Walsh said computer problems had arisen which had not occurred when the system was tested. But he admitted that the airline's performance had "not been good enough".


The Sun says that

THE disastrous opening of Terminal 5 could cost British Airways £20MILLION, experts said yesterday.
And the airline may lose even more in pay-outs to passengers who sue for cancelled flights.
There are still a whopping 15,000 lost bags sitting at Heathrow – and many could be flown to MILAN in Italy to be sorted and returned as it would be quicker.


The Times reports

Max Mosley faces calls to quit as Formula One chief after ‘Nazi’ orgy

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.


TRAGIC GOA MOTHER RETURNS WITH BODY says the Express

A mother is expected to return to the UK with the body of her teenage daughter who was raped and murdered on a beach in Goa, India.
Fiona MacKeown plans to get a 2.30pm flight from Mumbai, which will land at Heathrow at about 6.45pm this evening.


More health scares,the Mail says that

Eating one sausage a day raises cancer risk by 20 per cent, warn experts

One sausage a day can significantly raise the risk of bowel cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease, experts have warned.
Eating 1.8oz (50g) of processed meat a day - the equivalent of one sausage or three rashers of bacon - raises the likelihood of the cancer by a fifth, research shows.


The Independent reveals

Four nations in race to be first to go carbon neutral

Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica formally signed up to go zero carbon, joining the Climate Neutral Network launched at the meeting. Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, calls it "an idea whose time has come, driven by the urgent need to address climate change and the abundant economic opportunities emerging for those willing to embrace a transition to a green economy."


Many of the papers report

Killing Fields photographer Dith Pran dies

The Cambodian photographer whose life story under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime was recreated in the film The Killing Fields has died in New Jersey. Dith Pran, 65, had been ill with pancreatic cancer.
His death was announced yesterday by Sydney Schanberg, a former New York Times correspondent who worked with Pran in the early 1970s covering the rise of Pol Pot and Cambodia's civil war.


Finally the Telegraph reports

Mystery of discarded Picasso worth millions

Three paintings, including a rare Picasso, discovered lying in a house and estimated to be worth £3 million will be sold at auction next month.An auctioneer, invited to assess part of a multi-millionaire's collection, found the works hidden in a corner.
The owner's identity is a mystery after the auctioneer was sworn to secrecy, but is believed to be a member of an international royal family.

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