The papers look forward to Gordon Brown's speech later today

Defiant Brown prepares to face down Labour rebels says the Guardian

Gordon Brown will today seek to end the corrosive speculation surrounding his premiership with a speech in which he will promise to extend the welfare state, close the digital divide, and steer Britain through the global fiscal turmoil.
In what is seen as the most important speech of his career after months of criticism, the prime minister will not directly attack the rebels calling for his removal, but seek to show he has the grit, intellect and grasp of the future to take Labour to a fourth term. One aide said: "The speech's subtext is to prove there is no other politician than Brown that has the knowledge and experience to take the country through last week's threats to the whole edifice of British banking."

The Telegraph says that Brown to vow home internet access for all
children

All schoolchildren will have access to the internet at home under plans to give families £700 to get online, Gordon Brown will announce.

The Independent adds that

Although two out of three adults in Britain now have internet access, one million households are still not connected. The means-tested vouchers, to be spent on connection charges, technical support or buying computers, are designed to ensure that all 1.4 million children who do not have access will enjoy it by 2011 if their parents want it.

The Sun meanwhile reports that

GORDON Brown will today sharpen his axe for a Cabinet reshuffle — as he insists he is the ONLY man for the job of PM.
The Premier is poised to dump some ministers at the end of next week as he stamps his authority on warring Labour.
And he will use his keynote speech at the party conference in Manchester to declare that NONE of his Cabinet rivals is as qualified to lead the nation as he is.

The Times leads with Top-up fees for drugs herald two-tier NHS

Ministers are preparing to allow public patients to pay for some top-up drugs in a decision that opponents claim will spell the end of the National Health Service.
Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, is poised to relax the ban on patients paying privately for life-extending treatments while receiving NHS care. Such a change could result in wealthier patients living longer because they have been able to buy expensive drugs not approved by the NHS. It will force cancer sufferers to consider whether paying more than £30,000 a year for a drug is worth the extra months or years they could gain

The Telegraph meanwhile looks at another lottery claiming that

Pensioners living in affluent areas are to get smaller retirement payments because they are predicted to live longer, under new schemes introduced by insurers

The paper adds that

In a move that will hit millions of middle-class households some of the largest of the country's pension providers have decided to use customers' postcodes to determine the exact size of their annuity.

The tabloids concentrate on Tragedy,the Mail leads with

Suicide father's message to ex-partner after killing their two young daughters: 'They've gone to sleep for ever'

The Sun reports that

MONSTER David Cass left his two little girls lying side by side on a bed after suffocating them with a pillow, it was revealed last night.
The grim scene confronted tearful cops who frantically smashed their way into his caravan after he made a horrific call to their mum.
At first they hoped Ellie, three, and tiny Isobel, 14 months, were asleep. But the rescuers were too late.

de Menezes jury told to forget what they've heard, seen or read says the Times

The policemen who shot Jean Charles de Menezes believed him to be a suicide bomber and “an instant killing was the only option open to them”, an inquest heard yesterday.
Sir Michael Wright, the retired judge appointed as coroner for the inquest, said that the two officers — identified only as Charlie 2 and Charlie 12 — shot Mr de Menezes because they thought he was about to set off a bomb on a crowded train at Stockwell Tube station.
“They were convinced he was about to detonate a bomb and that unless he was prevented from so doing everybody present in that carriage was going to die,” the coroner said.

The Independent adds

The opening day of the hearing into the death of the 27-year-old electrician was given a minute-by-minute account of the police operation that reached the mistaken conclusion that he was one of four bombers who had tried to bomb the capital the day before.

According to the Guardian

Children's interest in science and their understanding of it are being crushed by the compulsory tests they sit at primary school, leading professors argue today.
Pupils in England are being taught to perform well in the tests, rather than having their "natural curiosity of science cultivated and harnessed", researchers from Bristol and Durham Universities will say in a report

Staying on the subject of schools and the Mail reports that

A school has slashed pupils' nightly quota of homework to give them time to play sport and watch documentaries.
Parents have been divided over the decision to hand out just one 40-minute project a night instead of three to four hours' work.
Pupils at Tiffin School, in Kingston, south-west London, are also urged to spend a further 20 minutes a night doing an education-linked activity such as reading, revising, playing sport, practising an instrument or watching a nature documentary.

and the Times reports that

The University of Cambridge is planning to offer one-year foundation courses for pupils who fail to win a place because their A-level grades are not good enough.
The idea is to provide a second chance to applicants who have the potential to succeed at Cambridge by helping them with their retakes and, where appropriate, giving financial support. The extra help could take place either at the university or colleges near the pupils.

In the aftermath of the bombing in Islamabad the Telegraph says that

Pakistan promised months of intensive military operations against militants following the attack. Owais Ghani, the governor of the troubled North West Frontier Province, said that operations will continue at least for the next five months.
Pakistan’s army is in the midst of an offensive against militants in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border, where the government claims it has killed more than 700 fighters in the past month

The Independent says that

The Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will plead with President George Bush today to change a policy which is being blamed for one of his country's worst terrorist atrocities.
"We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed," said Pakistan's ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. He argued that the Bush administration's decision to allow cross-border incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan, including by ground forces on at least one occasion, had been counterproductive "because they are not killing high-value targets, they are killing civilians".

The Guardian says that the ANC deputy leader expected to be interim president of South Africa

The South African government is poised to shift to the left after the ruling African National Congress indicated that its deputy leader, Kgalema Motlanthe, a prominent trade unionist, will become interim president following Thabo Mbeki's forced resignation.
The ANC will not publicly confirm Motlanthe's selection until parliament is formally informed and votes in the new president, for the remaining nine months of Mbeki's term, on Thursday.

The Times reports that

Masked kidnappers have taken 19 people hostage, including 11 Western tourists on safari in a remote desert border area of Egypt, taking them over the frontier into Sudan, Egyptian officials said yesterday.
The kidnapping was the first of its kind in Egypt in living memory, though Islamic militants have hit the country’s tourist industry in recent decades with bomb and gun attacks that have killed hundreds.

The Guardian reports that Head of watchdog resigns as number of babies in hospital from tainted milk rises to 13,000

Almost 13,000 Chinese babies are in hospital after consuming tainted baby milk, and a further 40,000-plus have been treated, in a scandal which yesterday led to the resignation of the head of the country's quality watchdog, according to state media.
The scandal, which began when dozens of babies suffered kidney stones and even kidney failure after drinking a popular brand that contained the chemical melamine, has since spread to more than 20 companies and affected products including fresh milk, yoghurt and ice-cream.

The Express leads with the cliam that BREAD AND BUTTER UP 43%

THE cost of basic foods has soared by nearly 10 times the official inflation rate.
A loaf of sliced white bread and a packet of butter now add up to £2.33 – a 43 per cent rise from £1.62 last year.
Eggs are up 27 per cent at £2.90 a dozen, cheddar cheese is 25 per cent dearer at £7.04 a kilo and best mince is up 20 per cent to £5.80 a kilo.

The Mail reports how Number of fake £1 coins in circulation doubles to 30 million in just five years

It's one of life's frustrations. You pop a pound coin into a parking meter or vending machine - and it drops straight back out again.
Only then do you realise that it's a worthless fake.
Up to one in 50 pound coins in circulation is counterfeit, the Royal Mint has said.

Finally the Independent reports how Munch's 'Vampire' comes out of the dark after 70 years

One of the most sensational and shocking images in European art, Edvard Munch's painting of a man locked in a vampire's tortured embrace – her molten-red hair running along his soft bare skin – created an instant outcry when unveiled a century ago.
Some believed the Norwegian artist's anguished 1894 masterpiece, Love and Pain – since known as Vampire – to be a reference to his illicit visits to prostitutes; others interpreted it as a macabre fantasy about the death of his favourite sister. Some years later, Nazi Germany condemned it as morally "degenerate".