One story dominates this morning

The day of reckoning says the Mail

Jonathan Ross will discover today whether his obscene phone call prank has cost him his £18million BBC deal.
Corporation bosses are being urged to stand up for decency and sack him at an emergency meeting.
In a desperate bid to keep the best-paid job in TV, Ross last night issued a belated apology to Andrew Sachs for the lewd and abusive messages he and Russell Brand left on the actor's answer phone.

Brand quits, Ross hangs on, as BBC tries to contain firestorm says the Guardian

Russell Brand last night quit his Radio 2 show while Jonathan Ross battled to save his job as the BBC was engulfed by panic over the fallout from a phone prank gone badly wrong.
As executives fretted about the possible impact on the BBC's future and teetered on the brink of civil war, furious director general Mark Thompson was considering whether the corporation should make a wholesale retreat from the brand of edgy comedy in which the pair specialise.

The Joke is on us says the Express

UNDER-fire BBC presenter Jonathan Ross is to be handed £16,000 a day of your money for doing nothing.
That will be his reward after he was suspended yesterday over the obscene phone stunt scandal, the Daily Express can reveal.

Manuel's revenge says the Independent

The future of the most senior woman in British radio was in doubt last night after the comedian Russell Brand resigned from his Radio 2 job as the furore over his phone prank with fellow presenter Jonathan Ross engulfed the BBC. Lesley Douglas, who is the BBC's controller of popular music, as well as being in charge of both Radio 2 and the digital station 6 Music, is said to be prepared to quit if members of her production staff are sacked over the scandal.

Meanwhile the Sun reports that Brand yelled Que in Bed

But Georgina Baillie, 23, said that despite his ladies’ man reputation, he was a “disappointment” in bed.
She told of Brand’s Fawlty Towers send-up as he QUIT the BBC and Jonathan Ross made a grovelling apology over the vile phone calls scandal.

There is other news around,the Times and the Telegraph run with different leads

Deafness is the new scourge of British troops in Afghanistan says the former

Hundreds of soldiers are returning from Afghanistan suffering from severe and permanent damage to their hearing because of the overwhelming noise of intense combat.
Nearly one in ten soldiers serving with one regiment have hearing defects that could bar them from further frontline service and affect their civilian job prospects, The Times has learnt

Motorists face paying tolls to drive on hard shoulder is the Telegraph's lead

Within months, officials will draw up plans to create a faster lane for those willing to pay for a quicker journey on the country's busiest roads during the rush hour.
Drivers would pay up to 42 pence a mile to avoid the jams under a model being considered by ministers.
Cars would be fitted with a transponder which fits to the windscreen and is linked to an account held by the motorist.

There is much coverage of the violence in the Congo

The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

says the Independent

The Guardian says

Around 45,000 internal refugees, most of whom had only arrived on foot a day earlier, fled a displaced persons' camp near Goma as forces loyal to Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda battled international peacekeepers and government troops. After UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, warned of a humanitarian crisis of "catastrophic dimensions", the rebels announced last night they were declaring a unilateral ceasefire "to avoid panicking the population of Goma".

The same paper reports that

Hundreds feared dead in Pakistan earthquake

Terrifying aftershocks rattled south-west Pakistan last night after an earthquake killed scores of people and left thousands homeless, with the death toll expected to climb.
Local officials in Baluchistan province said 170 people had been killed and 350 injured, but the Care International aid agency put the death toll at 500 to 600. Several villages were reduced to rubble. Local television showed lines of bodies, in white shrouds, laid out in the villages.

Thousands of students worse off after error leads to a cut in university grants reports the Times

Middle-income parents will have to pay more for their children’s university education after the Government miscalculated the number of students eligible for grants. It has reneged on some of its funding commitments after admitting that it had underestimated the number of people entitled to a full student maintenance grant this year by almost 10 per cent.
It has now reduced the income threshold for the means-tested maintenance grant by 17 per cent to £50,020. Families earning below £25,000 will still get the full grant of £2,835. But about 40,000 prospective students – 10 per cent of next year’s intake – are expected to lose out.

Blow to middle-class parents says the Mail reporting that

Universities minister John Denham had pledged that financial aid would be available to undergraduates whose parents earned less than £60,000 a year.

tax may rise in downturn says the Independent

The Chancellor signalled last night that taxes might have to rise if the economic downturn is prolonged.
Alistair Darling warned that Government revenue has collapsed because of the recession. He said that ministers would attempt to stimulate the economy by accelerating spending projects even if it meant a sharp increase in Government borrowing.

Bank under fire over handling of downturn reports the Guardian

The Bank of England failed to respond to warning signs of a looming recession and had been wrong to delay cutting interest rates until too late to stop growth contracting and unemployment rising sharply, a member of the Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) said last night.
Speaking as the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates to just 1% in an attempt to halt a slump in activity, David Blanchflower launched an outspoken attack on his eight MPC colleagues, saying the Bank had been too optimistic about the UK's ability to survive the global crisis, and Britain would now endure 18 months of falling output as it felt the full impact.

The Telegraph reports that

A man who brandished a gun at children after a row with his partner was shot dead in the street by armed police.Neighbours in Romford, Essex, dialled 999 to report a fight between a man and woman at around 1.40pm, police said.
When witnesses reported the man was carrying a gun, local officers requested support from an armed response vehicle

The Sun reports that

DOCTOR Who star David Tennant has decided to quit after four years as the Time Lord.
He will leave the Tardis for good after completing the filming of four special episodes to be screened next year and early 2010 as well as 2009’s Christmas special.

Finally the Independent reports

'Mummy, there's a cheetah in the garden and it's eating my bike'

When nine-year-old Toby Taylor ran into the kitchen on Friday afternoon and told his mother there was a cheetah in their back garden, she assumed he was playing a trick.

adding

So when she looked out of her kitchen window she was understandably shocked to see the world's fastest land animal gazing straight back at her. The exotic big cat, Akea, had escaped from a zoo near their family home in the village of Hamerton in Cambridgeshire.
"I started to have a go at Toby for slamming the door," said his mother Jules, "when he ran up to me shouting, 'Mummy, there's a cheetah in the garden.' I thought he was pulling my leg but he was white, shaking and shrill. We peered out of the kitchen window and there it was, sitting bang in the middle of our lawn, looking at the house."