Biggest house price fall since 1983 says the Guardian

Britain's biggest mortgage lender yesterday heightened growing recession fears when it revealed that the year-long credit crunch had wiped £20,000 off the cost of a home in the biggest annual fall in property prices on record.
On the day that rising inflation forced the Bank of England to leave interest rates unchanged at 5%, the Halifax said house prices last month were 11% down on a year earlier - the first double-digit decline since its monthly healthcheck of the market was first published 25 years ago. Prices in the past six months have been falling at an annual rate of 20%, but the Treasury sought last night to downplay the prospect of a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers, saying it was only one of a number of options being considered for an autumn economic package.

House prices back to 2006 and still falling says the Times

Economists now say that property could lose as much as a fifth of its value before the market begins to recover, a poll by Reuters showed. This would cut the average house price to £160,000. But some economists have an even gloomier outlook, forecasting that prices will tumble by 30 per cent from the market’s peak, taking the average house price to £140,000.

The Telegraph meanwhile leads with the story that

British households are having their "pockets picked" by foreign energy firms to subsidise customers in their own countries, the Government’s new consumer champion has said.In his first comments as Gordon Brown’s consumer advocate, Ed Mayo claimed a lack of competition in the European energy markets meant millions of British families were being ripped off.

Pictures of the Olymic flame and the Great Wall of China are on many of the front pages,the Independent leads with the headline On the Brink

China, the nation that invented fireworks, will today write in the smoggy sky above this ancient city an extraordinary statement of belief in its future – and its defiance of an ever-increasing tide of international criticism.
There will never have been such a show – or such dramatic symbolism – when the 29th summer Olympics opens in the futuristic "Bird's Nest" stadium. With another batch of protesters cleared away from Tiananmen Square, and the United States President and arch critic, George Bush, one of 80 watching heads of state, the button will be pressed on the ultimate pyrotechnic spectacular.

Bush condemns China on eve of Olympics says the Times

With the eyes of the world on China, and heads of state flying in for the opening ceremony at the Bird’s Nest stadium this evening, Mr Bush used some of his toughest language yet to press China to allow its citizens more freedom. Speaking in Bangkok only hours before his arrival in Beijing, he said: “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents and human rights advocates and religious activists. We press for openness and justice — not to impose our beliefs but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs.”

Staying in Asia and the Guardian reports that

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is facing the prospect of being thrown out of office after the country's fragile coalition government yesterday announced plans to impeach him.
The move plunged nuclear-armed Pakistan into fresh political turmoil, as it grapples to cope with a biting economic downturn and a security crisis that has seen Taliban-inspired militants take over its border region with Afghanistan and stage suicide bomb attacks across the country.

The Independent adds

After a frenzied 48 hours in the capital, the leaders of the two largest parties – who now head a fragile coalition government – united behind the move.
The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) led by Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif also appear to have broken their months-long deadlock over the fate of the judges that Mr Musharraf sacked in November.

Georgian forces attack Russian-backed separatists reports the Times

Heavy fighting was reported early this morning in the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia after Georgian forces launched an assault on Russian-backed rebels.
The battles erupted shortly after President Saakashvili, of Georgia, made a dramatic appeal for a ceasefire after a day of heavy clashes that claimed at least 12 lives.

Many of the papers report British Scouts hurt in Canada bus collision

At least nine members of a British scout group have been taken to hospital in Canada after their tour bus was involved in a head-on crash with an articulated lorry

. says the Telegraph continuing that

Only one of the victims was said to have sustained serious injuries which were described as "non life-threatening" by police and hospital staff. The others were being treated for cuts and bruises and other minor injuries.

According to the Mail's front page

MPs want to ditch 500-year oath of allegiance to the Queen

A group of MPs are campaigning to scrap their traditional oath of allegiance to the Queen, the Mail can reveal.
The declaration has been sworn by those joining or returning to Parliament for more than 500 years.
But 22 MPs from all three main parties say their 'principal duty' should be to represent the people who voted for them - not the monarch

Chemicals that double up as date-rape drugs are to be outlawed reports the Independent

The substances are widely sold as cleaning fluids and industrial solvents, but also have the effect of sedating a victim if they are absorbed into the bloodstream.
Ministers are also preparing to outlaw 26 anabolic steroids amid fears that growing numbers of teenage boys are using them for body building.

The Tabloid continue with the Maddy theme,the Mirror's front page carries a photo fit of the two poeple seen in Amsterdam

This is the mystery couple believed to have been seen with Madeleine McCann three days after she vanished.The sketches were drawn exclusively for the Mirror by a police artist on the evidence of witness Anna Stam, 41, who saw the trio in Amsterdam.
They show a dark-featured man aged 35-40 with a moustache, who was speaking in Portuguese, and a brown-haired woman in her 40s who was talking French.
Anna, who was flown to London by the Mirror to aid the hunt, said: "They fit the faces I remember. I just hope it's not too late."

The Sun reports that

A WOMAN who is convinced she saw Madeleine McCann wearing beach shoes on a city tram in Belgium told The Sun last night how cops ignored her.
The sighting by supermarket buyer Line Compere came just 12 days after Maddie was snatched from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal

Whilst the Express says also leads with the tram sighting

Three potential sightings in Belgium emerged in the official police files released this week. The McCanns’ investigators are also looking into a Scotland Yard report suggesting the child may have been snatched to order for a Belgian paedophile ring, despite a warning that the intelligence is “flawed”.

The Times claims on its front page that

British crime lords rule £40 billion underworld

A £40 billion underworld economy is dominated by homegrown criminals, with at least 27 “Mr Bigs” running their empires from inside British jails, The Times has learnt.
An intelligence map drawn up by the leading police expert on organised crime identifies more than 1,000 active criminal networks and shows that gangland is still controlled by British families, despite the influx of crime syndicates from Eastern Europe and South-East Asia over the past decade

Civil servants 'preparing for Conservative Government' says the Telegraph

Senior civil servants have held a series of informal private meetings with members of the shadow Cabinet amid increasing signs that Whitehall is actively preparing for a Conservative Government after the next election

education gap wider under Labour, claim Tories reports the Guardian

The Conservatives today set out their credentials to become the champions of social equality in a document outlining the education gap between rich and poor, which they claim has widened under the Labour government.
The paper, entitled A Failed Generation, says English schoolchildren's chances of getting good Sats results, GCSEs and A-levels is dictated by where they live

Many of the papers report on the

INNOCENT lad of 18 who was shot dead in a supermarket after he was hit by a stray bullet intended for a gang member.
Student Ryan Bravo was caught in the crossfire when he went to a Costcutter store to buy bread and milk with his two brothers and a cousin

says the Sun

The Mail adds that

A group of youths on mopeds drove on to the pavement and pulled up outside. They fired three or four shots into the shop as terrified shoppers fled, and one of the bullets hit Ryan in the back.
The business studies student collapsed and his brothers and cousin frantically tried to keep him alive.

Arthur Scargill returns to the papers,the Independent reporting that

in his first newspaper interview for more than a decade, Arthur Scargill has revealed himself as an unlikely champion for the protestors vowing to shut down Kingsnorth power station at the Camp for Climate change.
Mr Scargill told The Independent that he sympathises with the campaigners and condemned the tactics the authorities used to police the camp. He said he didn't agree with the campaigners' views on the use of coal as a means to create energy but said that he could see parallels in the cause they are fighting for and the struggle the miners faced in the 1980s.

The Express reports that

The underarm damp patch could soon be a thing of the past thanks to an injection of Botox.
Around 50,000 Britons a year are now turning to cosmetic surgeons to avoid those rings of shame.
Business is booming for “Sweatox”, as it has been dubbed, from celebrities on the red carpet, business leaders at that all-important meeting to those on a first date.

The Independent reports on The Neanderthal murder mystery

Why did Neanderthal man become extinct? Was it interbreeding with humans? Or did our ancestors wipe them out?

The paper says

The mystery of what killed off the Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago comes a step closer to being solved with a study suggesting that they formed a tiny population that had been teetering on the brink of extinction.

The Mirror reports on the the Woman who faces court rap for 'noisy sex sessions'

Kerry Norris, 29, and boyfriend Adam Hinton had marathon all-night romps at their one-bedroom flat.
The pair yelled out obscenities and the headboard banged against the wall until 6am, magistrates heard.
Len Baten, prosecuting on behalf of Brighton and Hove City Council, told how the sex sessions kept neighbours awake leaving them unable to go to work in the morning.

Finally the Times reports that

New Zealand police put Robbie Coltrane on wanted poster

Police in New Zealand issued the leaflet after a spate of burglaries in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city — though they concede that the Cracker and Harry Potter star has not turned to crime on the other side of the world.
New Zealand law bans photographs of young offenders from being published, so officers decided that Coltrane was the next best thing.