Thurdsay's papers

The banking system returns to many of the front pages.

According to the Guardian,

Alistair Darling is ready to hand over up to £5bn of taxpayers' money to the part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group in order to shore up its finances.

The bank it says

is seeking £25bn of extra capital so it can escape the multibillion-pound cost of the government's toxic asset insurance scheme.

The Times reports that

Just 12 months after the global economy was brought close to collapse by reckless lending — forcing banks to turn to taxpayers for help — stock markets in London and New York are enjoying one of the strongest bull runs in decades and investment banks are preparing to announce huge profits.

Whilst the Independent reports on the first criminal case of the credit crunch

a jury of 12 mainly working-class New Yorkers will decide the fate of the two Bear Stearns managers whose hedge funds imploded in 2007, signalling the start of the crisis. Ralph Cioffi, 53, and Matt Tannin, 48, pocketed millions of dollars in pay during the boom years, but the events of 2007 left their investors nursing losses of $1.6bn (£1bn) and ruined forever the reputation of Bear Stearns, one of the oldest investment banks on Wall Street.

And all this on the day that The Dow Jones closed above the critical 10,000 mark for the first time in a year on Wednesday – rasing hopes that a fully-fledged bull market is now in train.

What is certain to be the big political story of the day makes the front of the Telegraph which reports that David Wilshire, a senior Conservative MP, used his House of Commons expenses to pay more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to his own company, the paper having established that

between 2005 and 2008, Mr Wilshire paid up to £3,250 a month to the business. Extra invoices were also submitted and the total paid to the firm was £105,500. However, there is no official record of the company’s existence and it has never filed public accounts.

Gordon Brown has said the number of British troops in Afghanistan would rise by 500 to 9,500 in a move designed to end a dispute between ministers and defence chiefs and reassure sceptics that the military presence there is worthwhile.

reports the Guardian

The Independent though says

Gordon Brown was yesterday accused by the former defence secretary,John Hutton of acting too late after he announced plans to deploy 500 more soldiers to serve on the front line in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile the Telegraph says that the US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops

And according to the Times,When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents,

What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet,

The Mail reports that

Harriet Harman was accused of using the Commons expenses scandal to position herself for the Labour leadership as MPs broke cover yesterday to insist they would refuse to pay money back.

adding that

Senior Labour figures believe their deputy leader is 'shamelessly playing to the gallery' by encouraging a behind-the- scenes attempt to overturn the controversial audit of MPs' claims.

The Independent meanwhile says that

MPs have accused the three main party leaders of inflicting further damage on Parliament's image by competing with each other to look "toughest of all" in cracking down on expenses.

The Guardian has learnt that

The Obama administration is hoping to win new commitments to fight global warming from China and India in back-to-back summits next month,

Health matters in the Times which says that almost half of hospitals fail to meet fully the core standards of care despite a decade of Government investment in the NHS adding

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) warns today that more than 40 health trusts are at risk of being refused new licences to operate, which will be issued next April.

The lead in the Mail is that Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro capital management warned that

Labour's equal rights laws risk harming the prospects of women in the workplace and that excessive maternity leave and eye-watering sex discrimination payouts could backfire on women.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220477/Excessive-maternity-leave-huge-sex-discrimination-payouts-risk-backfiring-women.html#ixzz0TybyybQc


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220477/Excessive-maternity-leave-huge-sex-discrimination-payouts-risk-backfiring-women.html#ixzz0Tybsp3yl


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220477/Excessive-maternity-leave-huge-sex-discrimination-payouts-risk-backfiring-women.html#ixzz0TyblEzWI

The Express has more fears.It reports that Islam4UK,what it describes as a radical Islamic group,launched a massive campaign to impose sharia law on Britain.

Members have urged Muslims from all over Britain to converge on the capital on October 31 for a procession to demand the full implementation of sharia law.
On a website to promote their cause they deride British institutions, showing a mock-up picture of Nelson’s Column surmounted by a minaret.

Both the Sun and the Mirror lead with the news that Leona Lewis was attacked whilst signing copies of her new autobiography Dreams in a book shop.

A GEEKY bumpkin queued for five hours to meet Leona Lewis yesterday - then punched her in the face.
Shocked Leona screamed and cried, "Oh my God" as the buck-toothed nut caught her on the temple with a fierce right hook. says the Sun

Finally the Guardian reports the a former Japanese Prime Minister has a new job.

Junichiro Koizumi, the silver-haired reformer with an Elvis Presley obsession, is about to confront a very different foe: space monsters.He will lend his voice to Ultraman King, an extraterrestrial TV superhero revered by three generations of Japanese.