Terminal 5 launch disaster brings holiday chaos says the Times

Thousands of families heading on holiday this weekend face chaos after Heathrow’s new £4.3 billion terminal was reduced to a shambles on its opening day by the complete failure of its baggage system.
British Airways will begin today to wrestle with a huge backlog of passengers, many of them left stranded at Terminal 5 overnight, after the airline cancelled at least 34 flights.

The Mail leads with the same story,Terminal Disgrace,it says

Heathrow's showcase Terminal Five was branded a national disgrace last night as its baggage system failed on its first day.
All luggage check-in was suspended at the climax of a disastrous day that included lengthy delays, lost bags, broken escalators and 34 British Airways flights being cancelled.

It was the culmination of a miserable day at Heathrow's showpiece £4.3 billion terminal during which passengers were confronted by a series of other glitches, ranging from escalators breaking down to pay machines at the car park not working properly.
The problems will come as an embarrassment to the airport's owners, BAA, which had hoped the opening of the terminal would bring an end to the "Heathrow hassle".

says the Telegraph

The Independent tells us

Eddie Loryman seemed oblivious to the grandeur of Heathrow's soaring new terminal 5 building with its cutting-edge architecture, Gordon Ramsay eateries and glittering designer outlets. Dragging two large suitcases, he was more concerned with finding a lift that was actually working.
Mr Loryman, who had caught the early-morning flight from Newcastle, had hoped to be relaxing in Las Palmas in time for dinner

The Teelgraph leads with the news that

Feel-good factor drops to lowest level ever

According to an opinion poll,

Households are losing faith in the Prime Minister's ability to weather the financial crisis, a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph indicates.
Their confidence in the economy - the "feel-good factor" - has dropped to its lowest level recorded.
"Essex man", the typical family voter seen as the key to election success, in particular appears to be deserting Labour.

According to the Mail

families face £1,300 a year mortgage increase

after the country's biggest building society announced a rise in its lending rates.
The Nationwide will today hit homeowners with its fifth increase in mortgage rates since the start of the year.
Experts said homowners are paying the price for the global credit crunch, which is squeezing the amount banks and building societies have to lend.

The Express meanwhile reports that

Council tax squandered

COUNCILS are squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on bloated salaries for an army of town hall bureaucrats, it emerged yesterday.
More than 800 local officials now enjoy salaries and perks worth over £100,000 a year. That represents a 27 per cent increase over the previous year’s figure

The feel-god factor continues to be higher over the French president's visit

Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday tried to put substance into their new "entente formidable" with plans for more regular Anglo-French meetings, closer defence ties, nuclear cooperation and a more coordinated foreign policy. Following their summit meeting at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium yesterday, the two leaders agreed on a timetable of bilateral contacts that would make Britain's relationship with France its most systematic and institutionalised partnership.

says the Guardian

Brown and Sarkozy pledge to form 'entente formidable' says the Independent

At the end of the two-day state visit to Britain by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Prime Minister, who traditionally takes a cautious line on Europe, was unusually outspoken on the subject following the French leader's pledge to work with Britain "at the heart of Europe".
Mr Brown, speaking at the Emirates Stadium after a photo opportunity on the Arsenal pitch with the President and the football team's French manager, Arsène Wenger, said: "We share the same vision about the future of Europe. I believe in a global Europe."

The Sun's front page says simply Je Thames describing how

FRANCE’S sexy First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy sent the two most powerful men in Europe weak at the knees yesterday.
Ravishing ex-model Carla, 40, was publicly kissed by her husband, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, AND Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.

The Mirror leads with the headline

I wish they'd have killed me instead of her as it reports

A 15-year-old boy was today convicted of kicking and stamping to death a young woman in a park because she was dressed as a Goth.
Brendan Harris attacked Sophie Lancaster, 20, as she begged him and four other youths to stop beating her boyfriend, art student Robert Maltby

The Mail reports that

The family of Sophie Lancaster, who was beaten to death for being a Goth, have released a haunting picture of her battered face as she lay fighting for life in a hospital bed.
Her eyes purple with bruising and kept alive by machinery, the 20-year-old student was eventually to die of her injuries 13 days after the attack.
Tragically, she had sustained the fatal wounds after trying to protect her boyfriend Robert Maltby from a savage beating.

Father faces retrial after inquest rules boy was unlawfully killed reports the Independent

A father who pushed his six-year-old son off a hotel balcony in Greece could face a retrial in Britain after a coroner ruled the boy had been unlawfully killed.
The Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday it was examining the case of John Hogan, who was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter by a Greek court after it heard evidence he was suffering an "earthquake" of psychosis when he took his son's life

.

THE ex-wife of balcony plunge dad John Hogan yesterday demanded he face British justice – after a coroner ruled he unlawfully killed their six-year-old son

. says the Sun adding

Yesterday heartbroken mum Natasha Visser, 35, urged the Crown Prosecution Service to charge him with murder and attempted murder.
And she blasted the Greek court for not calling three crucial new witnesses.

The Guardian leads with New laws to prosecute City cheats

Alistair Darling is to give Britain's financial watchdog new powers to clean up the City by adopting a US-style whistle-blower system that will grant immunity from prosecution in return for evidence about market manipulation.
Alarmed by the illegal raid that drove down the share price of HBOS last week, the chancellor will outline plans for new legislation over the next few months that will give the Financial Services Authority plea bargaining powers already granted to tax officials, the Serious Fraud Office and the director of public prosecutio

Meanwhile the Independent reports on its front page on

Asylum: the peers' revolt

Britain must radically change its immigration policy and end immediately the deportation of failed asylum-seekers who fear persecution in Iran, a group of leading peers will tell the Government today.
The call for a moratorium on asylum removals is a direct response to the plight of Mehdi Kazemi, a gay Iranian teenager facing execution if he returns to Iran, whose case has been taken up by The Independent.

Basra crisis leaves British withdrawal in ruins reports the Times

Plans to bring home 1,600 troops from Iraq this spring are in disarray, Ministry of Defence officials said last night.
The admission came as the Iraqi Government’s offensive against Shia militias in Basra appeared to be failing.
The rebels ignored a deadline to disarm and intense fighting in the city raised the possibility that British forces could be asked to re-engage on the front line.

Baghdad under 24-hour curfew says the Telegraph

For the first time, American forces were drawn into the conflict as they helped the inexperienced troops.
In Baghdad, thousands of Shi'ites marched in support of Sadr and called for the resignation of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, whose drive to purge Basra of Shi'ite militias sparked the unrest

The Guardian reports that

George Bush signalled yesterday that he was likely to suspend the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this summer because of fears that the country might return to the levels of violence witnessed last year.
Speaking as a three-day curfew was imposed on Baghdad and as fighting continued for a third successive day in Basra, the US president said there had been gains in Iraq, with overall levels of violence down, but security was fragile

The same paper reports

UK admits breaching human rights convention over detainee's death

The government is to admit "substantive breaches" of the European Convention on Human Rights over the death and torture of Iraqi civilians in the custody of British soldiers, Des Browne, the defence secretary, revealed yesterday.
The admission, which could cost the Ministry of Defence millions of pounds in compensation, relates to the death of Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel receptionist, and the abuse of eight other Iraqi civilians while held in a British detention centre during a weekend in September 2003. Mousa had 93 identifiable injuries on his body and suffered asphyxiation. In response to claims by Daoud Musa al-Maliki, Mousa's father, and the other Iraqis, the government is to admit the breaches of article three of the convention which guarantees the right to life and prohibits torture.

According to the Times

Facebook, Bebo, My Space face censorship orders

Social networking sites will be required to remove material unsuitable for children, such as nude or violent images and comments, within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, under a tough new code for internet safety.
The Byron Review on e-safety, published yesterday, also recommends that search engines such as Google and Yahoo display a “safe search” button prominently on their home page, to filter out potentially harmful material when children search the web

'Keep pupils in to stop them eating junk food' reports the Telegraph

Children should be banned from leaving school at lunchtime so they cannot gorge themselves on junk food, a Government body says today.
Restrictions should also be placed on the opening of new burger bars, kebab shops, chip shops and sweet shops near schools to remove temptation from pupils, it is claimed

The Guardian reports

Doctor in MMR row defends stance at disciplinary hearing

Giving evidence for the first time at a General Medical Council disciplinary hearing, where he is accused of serious professional misconduct, Dr Andrew Wakefield also denied he was motivated by an interest in litigation. He defended the way he carried out research which caused national controversy and a drop in vaccine rates.

The Express reports

Saffron-robed monks are due to serve legal papers on the RSPCA, as part of an ongoing dispute over the charity's slaughter of a sacred cow.
Gangotri, a 13-year-old Belgian blue-jersey cross, was put down on welfare grounds in December by vets from the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals.
But campaigners claim the "mercy killing" was illegal and took place while members of Bhaktivedanta Manor, near Watford, Hertfordshire, Europe's largest Hindu temple, were at worship.

More animal stories in the Mail which tells of

The look that says 'I've just eaten all your chickens': The fox who was too fat to flee the coop

Opening her chicken coop one morning, Terri Strick hoped to find some fresh eggs from her hens.
Instead all she found was one - very full - fox, as well as an assortment of blood-stained feathers.

Finally the Independent reports from Japan where

In the Land of the Rising Sun, the first sightings of cherry blossom cause mass hysteria – so its early arrival this week has transfixed a nation

Six days early, and accompanied by the sound of clinking glasses and sighs of cautious relief from meteorologists, Japan's annual cherry blossom season has arrived. The petals were once a wartime fascist emblem symbolising the transience of the soul and the closeness of death. But today, the blossoming of the sakura – as the Japanese call these ornamental trees – is one of the more life-affirming and beloved of this nation's annual rituals.