It's official says the Guardian,the UK Economy is shrinking

The Bank of England was under intense pressure last night to cut interest rates after new figures showed the economy had contracted for the first time in 16 years as it heads into recession.
The news hammered the FTSE 100 index, which lost as much as 9% of its value at one point, wiping £90bn off the value of leading shares. It also clobbered the pound, which suffered its biggest fall against the dollar since 1992, to below $1.53 - a six-year low. As recently as July, the pound would buy $2, but it has been falling rapidly on evidence that the economy is slumping. The pound also hit a record low against the euro yesterday of just under 82p.

The Times says

The toll from the credit crisis and housing crash has ended Britain’s longest unbroken run of growth since quarterly records began in 1955. City analysts gave a warning that the economy could shrink at an even faster pace in coming months.

The Mail describes it as 'Worst financial crisis in human history'

On the 79th anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929:
• Britain's economic output slid 0.5 per cent - more than twice the decline expected by the City;
• Markets tumbled around the world, with leading UK shares losing almost £50billion;
• Sterling had its worst-ever week against the dollar since 1971 and hit a record low against the euro; • The oil cartel Opec cut production, a move likely to increase petrol prices up to 5p a litre;

The Telegraph says

Families must prepare themselves for a recession which could be deeper, more painful and longer-lasting than the early 1990s, experts warned after the economy shrank for the first time in 16 years.

Just how bad is it and will it get worse says the Independent

At the start of this year, let us recall, almost all the forecasts were for 2008 to be a year of modest growth and flat house prices. We now know different. This year will be the first since 1991 when the economy contracts. The most recent estimate for next year from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, an independent think-tank with an excellent record of prediction, puts the decline at a further 0.9 per cent during 2009. Unemployment will reach two million by the end of this year and perhaps three million by the end of 2010. Even the departure of so many migrant workers back to Eastern Europe won't be sufficient to stem the rise in joblessness.

Moving away from the economy and the papers continue to focus on the Mandleson-Osborne spat,the Telegraph says that

Lord Mandelson has admitted that the public were misled about his relationship with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire who discussed with Tories the possibility of a donation to the party.

The Guardian reveals that

A British businessman who represents a Ukrainian oligarch is paying tens of thousands of pounds in donations to the Tories, the Guardian can disclose. Payments made by the businessman's company have caused concern to the Electoral Commission, which queried some of the donations earlier this year.
Pauline Neville-Jones, shadow security minister, former chair of the joint intelligence committee and a key Cameron foreign policy adviser, currently has her office sponsored by Robert Shetler-Jones, a close associate of the foreign billionaire Dmitry Firtash.

The Mail meanwhile reveals

Rothschild and the daughter of one of the world's most brutal dictators

He is used to having glamorous women on his arm, but this picture of controversial financier Nathaniel Rothschild will raise some eyebrows.
His companion is Gulnara Karimova, billionaire daughter of one of the world's most brutal and bloodthirsty dictators, President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.
Like his friend, Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, she has had problems with the American authorities.

Most of the papers report

A police marksman choked back tears yesterday as he recalled the moment he became convinced that Jean Charles de Menezes was a suicide bomber about to detonate a device.
The officer from Scotland Yard's CO19 firearms unit, identified as C12, described how he shot Mr de Menezes at point-blank range when the innocent Brazilian got up and walked towards him even after he shouted "armed police" and pointed his gun at him.

says the Independent

The Guardian says that

Much has been written about what happened inside tube carriage 53613, where Jean Charles de Menezes lost his life in a confluence of circumstances on which an inquest jury will have to pass judgment. Yet until now nothing has been heard from the man who pulled the trigger at point blank range, firing at least three times into the head of de Menezes, who he assumed was a suspected suicide bomber.

The Times reveals the Murky truth behind Swiss suicide ‘clinic’ Dignitas

The Swiss call it the Gold Coast, the string of silent, discreetly guarded villas fringing Lake Zurich. Bankers, tycoons and the heirs to family fortunes live here, so the lakeside is fenced off and there is only one narrow rocky strip where the public can plunge into the water.
That is where hundreds of small fragments of bone were recently washed ashore, the macabre flotsam from leaking crematorium urns. Who is dumping human ashes in the lake in such industrial quantities? Accusing fingers were, rightly or wrongly, pointed at the assisted-suicide organisation Dignitas, which claims to have helped 100 Britons to die. These include, most controversially, a 23-year-old rugby player who had been paralysed in a training accident.

On top of all the financial gloom the Express tells us that

BRITAIN will be battered by an onslaught of bitter Arctic weather from tomorrow.
Snowfalls driven by gale-force winds and plunging temperatures will freeze out the mild spell that has even seen daffodils blooming.
Severe weather warnings have been issued for Scotland and large parts of England.

The Independent also looks to the winter

The turning back of the clocks tonight marks the descent into winter, bringing with it shorter days, darker evenings, and a condition that a rapidly increasing number of people now dread all year: seasonal affective disorder – SAD.
Figures reveal that up to four million people in the UK may now be affected by SAD – up from 500,000 a decade ago. That, even with a recession descending, has sparked a spending boom among those desperate to find a way to lift the gloom

The Telegraph reports that Obama breaks from campaign to be with ill grandmother

I want to give her a kiss and a hug," he said before arriving in Hawaii where his 85-year-old grandmother lives and where she and her late husband raised Mr Obama through much of his childhood.
"And then we're going to find out what chores I can do, because I'm sure there's been some stuff that's been left undone," he said.
On arriving on the Pacific island, Mr Obama headed straight to the block of flats where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lives.

The Times meanwhile reveals that John McCain was never tortured in my jail’

exactly 41 years ago this Sunday – that John McCain crash-landed and, say his captors, began his run for the United States presidency.
For even if the cold, barely conscious US Navy officer did not know it at the time, says Le Van Lua and the other Vietnamese whose lives entwined with Mr McCain’s that day, this little spot of Hanoi is undoubtedly where pilot turned politician. If fury had prevailed, it is a transformation that might never have happened, says Mr Lua, 61, a factory worker who was the first on the scene after the crash and swam out to retrieve the battered, politically valuable prize

According to the Guardian

Student grants at risk after botched costing

The government is considering cutting student grants and freezing the number of university places after it drastically miscalculated increases in the bill for higher education, the Guardian has learned.
It would constitute a major U-turn, reversing last year's pledge to raise the number of students eligible for free money while they study and a key policy to boost the number of graduates.
The move, which would apply to England alone, would be fiercely opposed by students and universities, and risks a serious political backlash.

According to the Telegraph

The French are using the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt to accuse England's men of acting like 'war criminals'.Exactly 593 years after King Henry V's legendary victory, a revisionist conference will be held at the scene of the triumph.
Academics will suggest that the extent of the feat of arms was massively exaggerated, with claims that the English were hugely outnumbered a lie.

Back to the recession and the Mail reports that

The BBC is facing claims that it is avoiding using the 'R-word' - recession - to avoid being too depressing about the gloomy situation.
It has been alleged that reporters have been encouraged to opt for 'downturn'.
Sources have suggested that those covering the story for the BBC World Service have also been given the phrase 'global financial crisis' to use.

Finally the Indy reports from one area of the world which is riding the economic storm

Beirut's Blombank has just boasted a record 34 per cent rise in profits in the first three quarters of this year. The chairman of Audi Saradar Bank, who happens to be minister for the displaced in the Lebanese government, says that Lebanon is expected to record its highest GDP growth in many years. House prices continue to soar. And this in a nation that suffers a $45.5bn public debt.