Wednesday's papers

A fiscal look to the papers on the eve of the Pre Budget report

Alistair Darling today will contest growing doubts over Britain’s economic recovery as he tries to show the markets that he is serious about halving the £180 billion deficit in four years.

reports the Times adding that

the Chancellor was confronted with figures that suggested that Britain would struggle to climb out of recession before the end of the year.

The Telegraph believes that the Chancellor will announce that Labour will carry on trying to spend its way out of recession, postponing swingeing Whitehall cuts, despite fears over Britain’s vital top credit rating being downgraded.

Setting the scene for a General Election based around who will protect frontline public services, Mr Darling will say that budgets for schools, hospitals and the police have been identified as the only Whitehall “priorities” and will be protected.

only schools, hospitals and the police being spared average cuts of about 14 per cent over three years.says the FT

these will be expected to be funded by efficiency gains, tax rises and the scrapping of what Gordon Brown, the prime minister, calls “unnecessary programmes”.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that Labour opens new front in battle with the City reporting that the Chancellor

will use tomorrow's pre-budget report to impose a one-off tax on this year's bonus round, but No 10 will further step up the squeeze on the Square Mile on Thursday with a 60-page report making the case for a so-called transactions tax on all City trading, and an insurance scheme to stop taxpayers being forced to foot the bill for any future banking crises.

The Independent reports that

The president of Britain's second largest bank has issued a veiled threat that the country's elite financiers could join a mass exodus from the City of London if the Government pushes ahead with a bonus supertax today.

Day 2 of the Copenhagen summit and the Guardian says that Developing countries reacted furiously to a leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for the G77, a group of 130 developing nations including China, said the leaders of the rich world had a “moral obligation” to cut greenhouse gases.

adds the Telegraph

Events in Baghdad return to the front pages

five near- simultaneous car bombs that destroyed official buildings across the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing at least 127 people and injuring more than 500 in the most co-ordinated attack in the city in recent years.

reports the Times

yesterday's multiple car bombings across Baghdad came as a sharp reminder that hostilities in Iraq are far from over. The vast majority of British troops may have come home, and the tens of thousands of US troops are progressively being confined to bases before their eventual withdrawal, but Iraq is not yet a haven of calm.says the Independent

The Telegraph reports the comments of Stanley McChrystal who says that Osama bin Laden must be captured or killed if al-Qaeda is ever going to be defeated,

British health care is little better than that of former Communist countries, which spend a fraction of the billions poured into the NHS. reports the Mail

The Guardian reports that a ground-breaking website that exposes the quality of public services – from children's welfare to council recycling, and crime fighting to teaching – goes live today amid a row over its cost and accuracy.

Oneplace, an ambitious collaboration involving six independent inspectorates, is intended to provide a consumer guide to the performance of local authorities, police forces, schools, NHS primary care trusts, prisons and probation services.

The future of the scientific institution where Michael Faraday and Sir Humphry Davy once worked has been thrown into doubt by a financial crisis that threatens the position of its director and even its survival.reports the Times.The paper has learnt that

Heavy losses incurred during a major refurbishment have left the Royal Institution of Great Britain (RI) so short of funds that its auditors have raised questions about its ability to continue going,

'My son was killed – and Doherty and his cronies were in some way culpable,'reports the Independent

Mark, a 30-year-old Cambridge graduate, died after falling from a balcony of a flat in Whitechapel, East London, during a party attended by, among others, the singer Pete Doherty – who Mark was trying to convince to go to a play in which he was starring.

More than one in 10 people living in Britain today were born abroad, a record level, new figures show. says the Telegraph

One of the key factors behind Britain’s population increase has been the flow of migrant workers from Poland, Lithuania and six other Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004.

Hundreds of thousands of people were wrongly diagnosed with swine flu after calling the Government's emergency helpline, reports the Mail

Around 800,000 people were incorrectly told to stop work and take the Tamiflu drug, costing employers hundreds of millions of pounds and adding to the NHS drug bill.
In fact just one in every five people diagnosed by the controversial call centres actually had the illness.

The Sun leads with more on Tiger Woods who it says was initially admitted to hospital after his car crash for a suspected overdose, it was claimed last night.

Finally the Guardian reports how a Gang dug its way into a security company headquarters as Brazil was caught up in football fever

The gang of thieves are thought to have spent months plotting the $6m (£3.5m) heist which took place while most Brazilians were glued to their television screens watching the final matches of the season with four teams still in with a chance of taking the title.