Wednesday's papers

A mixed bag of headlines today from the papers.

The attorney general was under intense pressure tonight to order a wider series of police investigations into British complicity in torture after one of the world's leading human rights organisations said there was clear evidence of the UK government's involvement in the torture of its own citizens

.reports the Guardian

More than two million children are being taught in schools that are mediocre or failing, inspectors said yesterday.says the Mail adding that

A 'stubborn core' of incompetent teachers is holding pupils back and fuelling indiscipline and truancy, Ofsted warned.

Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. reports the Telegraph

A “period of hiatus” in Washington - and a lack of clear direction - had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

adds the paper

The Times leads with news that research into cancer and dementia will come under threat from government plans to fund social care,as the health secretary tells the paper

that millions of pounds would be “reprioritised” from health research and development to pay the costs of the Social Care Bill, published today.

Health also features on the front of the Independent

The HIV pandemic which started 28 years ago is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday.

and health is also on page One of the Express which reports that high levels of salt added to everyday foods are killing tens of thousands of people in Britain.

Day one of the Iraq inquiry is widely reported.

British officials discussed toppling Saddam Hussein in 2001 but rejected a policy of “regime change” as illegal under international law,says the Telegraph

Foreign Office mandarins even drew up a secret document discussing the idea of removing the dictator as attempts to restrain him with sanctions began to fail. But any suggestions of supporting "regime change" were dismissed repeatedly as having no legal backing.adds the Independent

The Guardian menawhile says that

Barack Obama said today that he intended to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, as it became clear that he is poised to announce early next week the deployment of up to 35,000 more troops to the troubled region in one of the most crucial decisions of his young presidency.

Many of the front pages carry pictures of Christina Schmid the widow of the army bomb disposal expert killed in Afghanistan who urged Britain and its leaders to recognise the sacrifice of soldiers as she buried husband yesterday.

In a powerful tribute, Christina Schmid said the country's "peacemakers" should work as hard as the man she described as her "warrior" had done to preserve life throughout his military career

.says the Independent

The Times reports that Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were given a secret £61.6 billion in bridging loans last year on top of the £500 billion of support that the banking sector received from the taxpayer.

MPs expressed astonishment when Mervyn King told them about the emergency funding, which indicated that the two banks were in far greater peril than first thought.

The Telegraph adds that

In comments which are likely to infuriate Mr Brown, Mervyn King said that the next Government would need to “eliminate a large part of the structural deficit” over one parliamentary term alone. This proposal goes significantly further than anything penned in by the Government in the Budget, or what is demanded by the Fiscal Responsibility Bill unveiled last week in the Queen’s Speech.

According to the Independent,

Senior conservatives believe that Gordon Brown may call a general election next March to head off the prospect of bad economic statistics scuppering his claim that he had guided Britain safely out of recession.

The Mail reports on the tragic facts coming out of yesterday's inquest.

A managing director stabbed his estranged wife to death before jumping in front of a train after she fell for a younger man.
Mark Findlay, 41, murdered his wife Helen, 36, with a hammer and a knife at their home and then walked to the local train station and killed himself, leaving their two young children orphaned.

The Sun reports that

The detective on the run accused of swindling the Madeleine McCann fund out of £300,000 was nicked last night

and all thanks to the paper

Our team tipped off police that he and his lover were about to flee after we staked out their bolthole.

Problems continue to mount for the Italian Prime Minister,

The Italian prostitute at the centre of a sex scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi has explicitly claimed for the first time that she had sex with the Italian prime minister.

reports the Guardian which adds

Since first alleging she spent a night last November at Berlusconi's Rome residence, Patrizia D'Addario has limited herself to saying she shared a bed with the 73-year-old prime minister. But in Gradisca, Presidente ‑ Take Your Pleasure, Prime Minister ‑ D'Addario writes: "He told me he wanted contact with my skin, he held me tight, he took my breath away. I took him inside me, he suffocated me with kisses."

Finally ,reports the Independent,

After embarrassing breakdowns caused by bread-dropping birds and hugely expensive repairs, the world's biggest science experiment – the Large Hadron Collider – has suddenly burst into life and smashed together proton beams for the first time.