Headlines

What do the FT and the Morning Star have in common? They both frontpage the M&S EU tax story (14 Dec, Morning).

The Telegraph has Blair, the lame duck (part 2); The Times has crisis for the LibDems and Charles Kennedy.

The Independent devoted its front page ('See no evil...') to the 'rendition' / torture affair. It's not surprising that The Independent would whip itself up into a froth of moral indignation over this issue. As The New York Times put it last week ('Skepticism Seems to Erode Europeans' Faith in Rice'): 

To some Americans at least, the way the charges about secret prisons and C.I.A. flights have gained currency illustrates the readiness of many Europeans always to believe the worst about the United States. More than one commentator over the last few days has referred to the secret prisons as a Gulag Archipelago, even though Romania and Poland, the countries where the prisons are said to be situated, have denied their existence. Moreover, their total prison population would be at most a few dozen - compared with the hundreds of thousands that were confined in Stalin's real Gulag Archipelago.

The Bush administration's treatment of imprisoned suspected terrorists, coupled with the problems the United States continues to encounter in Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney's resistance to Congressional curbs on the handling of prisoners, has not made Ms. Rice's job of persuasion any easier.

The International Herald Tribune had, amongst other things, a story from Iraq, which I think was basically this one, by Edward Wong:

The guerrilla war found fertile ground in Tikrit, and defiant Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections in January. But turnout in the parliamentary elections on Thursday is expected to be high, reflecting the shift in attitude of many Sunni Arabs toward the American-engineered political process.

"Last January, the elections were quite different than they are now," Wael Ibrahim Ali, 61, the mayor of Tikrit, said as he strode Tuesday along the grounds of the palace where Mr. Hussein used to celebrate his birthdays. "The people refused to vote, and now they see it was a wrong stand or wrong position."

Update: The link to the FT does not give you anything, unless you're a subscriber. This is what it said in the linking page: M&S wins landmark EU tax case - Marks and Spencer, the British retailer, has won a landmark tax case in Europe’s top court, which could open the way for dozens of multinational companies to claim back tax paid in the European Union. Dec 13 2005 21:27