Monday, June 02, 2008


I'm glad Dad shopped me says the front page of the Mirror on a morning that the papers have a number of main stories

A teenager facing certain jail for having a gun and ammo praised his dad last night for shopping him to police.
Paul Metcalfe's father Neil, 43, turned him in for hiding a gun and 11 live bullets in his room. Paul, 19, now faces up to five years' jail after being convicted of possessing a firearm. He said: "Although I was angry I now know why dad did it, and respect him. Thanks to him, I won't go down that path again."


The Times leads with the story that

Care home workers go unchecked, police warn

Tens of thousands of migrants are working with vulnerable elderly people in care homes without undergoing full criminal record checks, The Times has learnt.
Senior police officers have alerted Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to the scale of the problem in a report detailing the impact on the UK of migration from Eastern Europe.


The Mail's front page reports that

The Home Office paid £8million to a firm run by a man jailed for arranging a murder.
The shambolic department failed to make checks on former police officer Mark Ayres.
Although he had been released early, his 13-year-sentence still had two years to run when Government officials signed on the dotted line. His firm ITA (Overseas Escorts) collected the cash over two years for handling the deportation of illegal immigrants.
It is the latest in a string of scandals to hit the Home Office. Last night Opposition MPs questioned how many other criminals may have won contracts.


Immigration features on the front of the Express which says it is out of control

SHOCKING new figures last night revealed the extent to which the country’s immigration policy is running out of control.
It is now clear that 2.3million people have been allowed to flock through the “open door” into Britain.
Most of the newcomers have arrived from outside the EU, making a mockery of Government claims that an annual cap on migrants would have a limited effect. Critics said the influx – equivalent to the entire population of Greater Manchester – has put a massive drain on public services.


As the Commons goes back to work,the papers spotlight Labour's next problems

Brown told detention is excessive and out of step says the Guardian

Europe's human rights commissioner is to write to Gordon Brown this week warning him that the proposal to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge is an "excessive" measure that will put Britain "way out of line" with the rest of Europe and will prove counter-productive.
The intervention from Europe's human rights watchdog comes as the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, prepares to outline to Labour MPs tonight "concessions" designed to curb the scale of a backbench revolt a week on Wednesday, when the key vote is to be held


Brown warns 42-day terror detention rebels that he won't back down says the Times

Although he knows that a reverse in the Commons on such a key issue would place a massive new question mark over his leadership, the Prime Minister writes in The Times that he will not give way. “I will stick to the principles I have set out and do the right thing,” he says.
With MPs returning to Westminster for the first time since the Crewe & Nantwich by-election disaster, Mr Brown is employing shock tactics ten days before the 42-day vote to warn MPs that although ministers will continue to strengthen safeguards they cannot expect another about-turn


The Telegraph leads with the claim that

Gordon Brown 'diverts rural aid to bribe voters'

Official figures show that vast sums have been shifted from Tory-leaning country shires and transferred to Labour-supporting towns and cities over the past decade.
Councils in London are now receiving twice as much per head of population from central government as their rural counterparts, according to statistics from the independent House of Commons Library.
The government funding gap between urban and rural areas has grown dramatically since Labour came to power in 1997.


The Independent leads with Zimbaabwe Murdered by Mugabe's mob is its front page

Tonderai Ndira will not be campaigning when Zimbabwe votes again. He will not rally his neighbourhood, as he did two months ago, for one last push against an unwanted regime. Instead, he is buried in an unmarked grave in the Warren Hills cemetery in Harare. A week on from his funeral, only his brother knows for sure which of the mounds is his. He will not leave a marker because he believes state agents are still not finished with the murdered activist. They would like to dig up his brother's remains to remove the incriminating evidence.


The Guardian says

Tsvangirai says Mbeki 'no longer fit' to be Zimbabwe mediator

The warning comes in a letter from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader to Mbeki made public just days after it was revealed that the South African president had written a four-page letter to George Bush demanding that the US president stop criticising Mugabe.


The paper leads with the story that

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.


According to the Telegraph

Hillary Clinton's aides prepare to concede

Although she won by a wide margin over Barack Obama in yesterday’s Puerto Rico primary - with 85 per cent of the vote in, she was leading by 36 percentage points - the former First Lady made no mention in her victory speech of taking her fight beyond this week.
Instead, she made a final appeal to some 178 uncommitted "super-delegates" - party officials whose convention votes are not tied to the primaries - that she would be the stronger general election candidate against John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.


The Independent reports that

Hizbollah hands over Israeli troop remains as Lebanese spy is freed

A prisoner convicted of spying for Hizbollah was released to Lebanon by Israel yesterday as the guerrilla group handed over what it said were the remains of dead Israeli soldiers.
The cross-border moves raised speculation that Israel could be preparing to trade other prisoners for the two soldiers – whether dead or alive – whose abduction triggered the 2006 Lebanon war.


Back in the UK and there is much coverage of the winner of Britain's got talent,the Sun leads with

BRITAIN’S Got Talent winner George Sampson told last night how a devastating spine disease sent him BLIND in one eye.
But brave George, 14, vowed to defy doctors who have warned his torso-twisting dance routines could cripple him.
The youngster, who overcame his disability to scoop a £100,000 prize in Saturday’s final, insisted: “There’s no way I’d ever give up dancing. Nothing would stop me.”


TV talent show's winner heads for stardom... and a reunion with his father
says the Mail

Today may seem like another day at school for 14-year-old George Sampson. But life will never be the same again.
For the surprise winner of ITV's Britain's Got Talent has big plans.
Among them is paying off his devoted single mother's mortgage, buying a Volkswagen camper van and a summer house for his garden.
Last, but by no means least, is the chance to patch up his relationship with the father he rarely sees.


new crackdown on teenage binge drinkers says the Guardian

Parents are to be advised at what age they should let their children drink alcohol at home, under government plans to be announced today to tackle youth binge drinking.
All pubs and clubs will also be expected to seek ID before serving alcohol to anyone looking 21 or younger.
Licensed premises will lose their licence or face fines if they break the law on underage drinking twice. At present fines are imposed only after three offences


Teach your kids how to drink says the Sun

Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families said last night: “We need a culture change about drinking, with everyone from parents, the alcohol industry and young people all taking more responsibility.
“We need to fundamentally influence young people’s behaviour and attitudes.”


Meanwhile many of the papers report how 'Last orders' turn nasty on Underground

For thousands, it was the chance to be part of a Facebook-inspired "flash mob" – a spontaneous group of partygoers enjoying the last night of legal drinking on the London Underground. But for sober Tube travellers, Saturday night's journey was the stuff of nightmares.
Police arrested 17 people for a range of public order offences and closed six Underground stations, with several trains taken out of service because of vandalism. The Circle line was suspended for a time. says the Independent

The Mirror reports

Builders discover £200,000 cash bundle in plush Birmingham apartment block

The Polish pair found the bundle of money in an air conditioning pipe in a posh tower block.
Police searched an apartment and are conducting a thorough sweep of the top floor of the 26 storey Beetham Tower, which houses 152 of the most expensive apartments in Birmingham.
A source said: "The two lads were just going about their work when they found it. "They called the police in straight away. It was very honest of them.


The Times reports that

Mother of dead children is taken to mental unit

A Sri Lankan mother suspected of stabbing two of her children to death and critically wounding her baby girl was lonely and depressed by her life in Britain, her relatives said yesterday.
Police last night detained Sasikala Navaneethan, 35, under the Mental Health Act over the deaths of her son, 5, and his sister, 4. Their six-month-old sister remains in a critical condition after all three children were stabbed at their home in Carshalton, South London, late on Friday night.


Horror crash reports the Mail

Four teenagers were killed and a fifth is fighting for his life after their car careered off the road in the dark and hit a tree.
The sole survivor - who was driving the car - was last night seriously ill in hospital.
The group of five schoolfriends were on their way home after a night out when the crash happened at 12.25am on Sunday.


Historic film sets destroyed by huge fire at Universal Studios reports the Independent

Hollywood woke up to a scene straight from one of its own disaster movies yesterday, after a massive fire broke out at the city's biggest film studio, destroying several historic film sets and damaging one of the industry's most valuable video archives.
Some 300 firefighters were called to Universal Studios in Los Angeles early on Sunday, after a blaze broke out in a backlot area containing New York and New England street scenes, which had been used in such well-known productions as Seinfeld and War of the Worlds



Finally the Telegraph reports on a feud between two writers

Derek Walcott, the Nobel prize-winning poet, has attacked VS Naipaul in verse.The St Lucian writer composed a poem, which he read it at a literary festival in Jamaica, that mocked his contemporary as a mongoose.
Walcott told an audience at the Calabash Literary Festival: "I'm going to be nasty," before reading The Mongoose, which opens with the lines: "I have been bitten. I must avoid infection. Or else I'll be as dead as Naipaul's fiction."

No comments: