Much on the economy in the papers this morning

High street hit by full force of credit crunch is the lead in the Times

The credit crunch hit the high street with a vengeance yesterday as shock figures from Marks & Spencer wiped £4 billion off the value of Britain’s leading retailers.
The grim news from Middle Britain’s favourite store marked a new phase in the economic downturn and threatens the high street with its worst slowdown in 20 years. Adding to the gloom, one of the country’s biggest housebuilders revealed that it was teetering on the brink of collapse. Taylor Wimpey’s value more than halved after it failed to secure rescue funding and said it would cut 900 jobs.

The Telegraph says that

Families will see their living standards fall for at least a year because of the credit crisis and soaring oil prices, the Bank of England has said.As economists warned for the first time that Britain was heading for a recession, the Bank's new deputy governor, Charlie Bean, admitted there was "not very much" the country could do in the face of global financial turmoil.

This isn't just a slump, it's an M&S slump says the Guardian

More than £1.25bn was wiped off the stock market value of the food and fashion group after the retailer became the first big store chain to show the full extent of the damage caused by the economic downturn. Shares dived by 25% to 240p, their lowest since 2001. Little more than a year ago they were changing hands at more than 740p and the company was valued at nearly £12bn. Last night it was worth barely £4bn.

Knife crime meanwhile takes the lead in the Tabloids

Walk on by says the Mail

The risk from violent crime is now so high that people should walk away if they see someone else in trouble - in case they end up losing their own life.
That was the depressing warning yesterday from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
He said he would tell his own children to 'look after themselves first' rather than help a victim in distress.

Badge of hope is the lead in the Sun which reports

TELLY’S grieving Brooke Kinsella last night begged Britain to unite against knife crime behind the symbol of hope above — a stylised ‘K’ designed by her murdered brother.
The ex-EastEnders star told The Sun in a poignant interview: “When I think of Ben, I think of this.”

The Mirror urges its readers to Join our campaign to stop knives and save lives

18,000 women and children trafficked into UK sex trade says the Independent

Up to 18,000 females, including girls as young as 14, are working in brothels across Britain after being smuggled into the country to meet the booming demand for prostitutes. Police, unveiling the results of the largest ever crackdown on people smuggling yesterday, revealed that nearly five times more women than previously thought are working under duress in massage parlours and suburban homes.
Operation Pentameter 2, a six-month campaign by police forces across the country, resulted in the release of 154 women and 13 girls put to work as part of a lucrative trade dominated by organised crime gangs, which increasingly co-operate via the internet to maximise earnings from their victims.

The Guardian reports that

Teenage girls born in Britain are being trafficked for sexual exploitation within the UK, police said yesterday, adding that children are being "groomed" by men acting as boyfriends who carry out the abuse and then take the youngsters to other towns for further exploitation.
Officers fear that as many as 33 girls between the ages of 12 and 15 could have been involved in a case uncovered in Sheffield last year. Only one, a 15-year-old, was willing to give evidence in court, but following that a 23-year-old man was jailed for 10 years for serious sexual offences which included rape of a child. Five other men faced deportation procedures.

The Times reports that

French students tortured and 'horrifically murdered' in East London

Two French students have been found dead with multiple stab wounds in an East London flat, it was confirmed last night.
A double murder inquiry has been launched after the bodies of the two men, believed to be in their twenties, were discovered on Sunday, when firefighters were called to deal with a fire at the address in Sterling Gardens, New Cross.
A police source said the pair had been "horrifically murdered" adding that it was believed they may have been tortured before being killed and their flat set alight.

The Guardian reports from Israel where

A Palestinian construction worker killed three people when he drove a large bulldozer into oncoming traffic on a busy Jerusalem street yesterday, crushing cars and overturning a bus in what Israeli police said was a terrorist attack. At least 44 others were injured: drivers in cars, pedestrians and passengers in the bus that was driving up Jaffa Road, in west Jerusalem, at the time of the incident.

The Telegraph reports that

Jerusalem bulldozer terrorist's 'heart broken by Jewish girl'

Relatives of Hussam Dwaith, the bulldozer driver who killed three and injured dozens in a terror attack on Jerusalem's streets, have said that he had never recovered from a doomed romance with a young Jewish woman and a spell in prison.

The Independent leads with

Rich nations are 'betraying' Africa

The world's richest nations will today be told by Gordon Brown to stop backsliding on their pledges to double aid to Africa by 2010. The Prime Minister will risk a clash with world leaders at next week's G8 summit in Japan over their failure to honour pledges to boost aid made three years ago.
Mr Brown is backing Bob Geldolf, who warned yesterday that high energy prices are starving the super-poor in Africa. The prominent aid campaigner and the Prime Minister fear that Japan, France, Italy and Canada are using the global economic downturn as an excuse to scale back their aid payments to the world's poorest countries.

Government pressed for explanation on Keith Vaz 'reward' letter reports the Telegraph

Geoff Hoon, Labour's chief whip, sent the handwritten note to Mr Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, the day after he voted in favour of detaining terror suspects for up to 42 days.
It prompted accusations that Mr Vaz, who had previously opposed extending the period of detention, had been offered a knighthood or peerage to side with the Government.

The Guardian says

Both insisted that the sentiment in the letter was light-hearted. There had been much gossip, rumour and joking around the time of the key vote three weeks ago that Mr Vaz would be knighted or ennobled for backing 42 days, after receiving concessions from ministers. His committee had issued a report that was sceptical about the plan.

Fuel D Day says the Express reporting that

GORDON Brown was last night handed 100,000 reasons for slashing the punishing fuel duty that is threatening to paralyse Britain.
The Daily Express’s crusade for a substantial reduction in tax on petrol and diesel was taken right to the door of 10 Downing Street.
The petition signed by 100,000 of our loyal readers - both the paper and online - makes clear the fury of Middle Britain at Labour’s failure to ease the burden on millions of families.

The Independent's poll of polls tells us

Gordon Brown now leads the most unpopular Labour government in history,The public approval ratings of his administration have sunk below the worst achieved during Labour's darkest days in power in the 1960s and 1970s, when the governments led by Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were engulfed by economic crises.

Prince William's expolits in the caribbean make the front of the Mirror,Prince Charlie is its headline

Prince William has helped seize £40million of cocaine as part of a Royal Navy helicopter team.
The 26-year-old had his first taste of front-line action as his frigate, HMS Iron Duke, hunted down a speedboat off the West Indies following a tip-off about smugglers.
William stayed on the Lynx chopper hovering above the target as a crack team boarded. It is not thought any shots were fired.

According to the Telegraph

Robert Mugabe's regime may run out of money

The printing presses which produce reams of worthless banknotes in Zimbabwe may soon fall silent after a German company stopped supplying paper.Giesecke and Devrient, based in Munich, said it would no longer deliver watermarked paper to President Robert Mugabe’s Reserve Bank. This was due to “the critical evaluation by the international community, German government and general public” of the political situation in Zimbabwe.

The Times reports that

Pressure was mounting last night for the key role of mediating an end to the crisis in Zimbabwe to be taken out of the hands of Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, whose “softly softly” approach to Robert Mugabe has been condemned worldwide.
The UN’s push for greater involvement came amid mounting frustration with the failure of current mediation efforts. The United States pushed for Mr Mugabe and other ring-leaders of election abuses in Zimbabwe to be slapped with a worldwide travel ban and the freezing of their assets.

Tsvangirai rules out African Union call for power-sharing deal says the Guardian

Tsvangirai also said there could be no talks while state-orchestrated violence continued against supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change. At least nine people have been murdered in political attacks since last Friday's presidential runoff, and hundreds more beaten or driven from their homes.

The Guardian reports that

Skunk smokers more at risk of psychosis than hash users

People who smoke the more powerful kind of cannabis known as skunk are 18 times more likely to develop psychosis than those who smoke milder forms, according to research by psychiatrists.
Early results from a study presented to the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggest that skunk poses significantly greater dangers to mental health than the traditional kinds of cannabis, such as hash.

Murray crashes out to Nadal as girlfriend and 4,000 fans on Murray Mount watch in agony reports the Mail

They gathered on Murray Mount, a multitude in hope of a miracle.
Four thousand of them covered just about every patch of grass on Henman Hill, temporarily renamed in Andy's honour.
And lo, though so many had waited loyally for the miracle, it never came to pass.
The snarling Scot they had taken briefly to their hearts ended up like so many other British hopes at Wimbledon - as a loser.

Nadal muscles Andy Murray out of Wimbledon says the Times

It had been billed as the Battle of the Biceps, but in the end Andy Murray was made to look like a weakling by Rafael Nadal, who dumped him out of Wimbledon with a straight-sets victory last night. The only thing lacking from this one-sided contest was the sand for Nadal to kick into Murray's face, such was the humiliation of their quarter-final encounter