#tomorrowspaperstoday These are my final splashes for the year. I leave for Europe in the next week or so. I would like to thank all of you who read this, follow me, comment… you all make my day and I am glad to see I have a following; it makes me proud. I will not be doing this when I am away as I believe it is a little too much to ask- I must focus my energies elsewhere for the moment, but you have Mr Nick Sutton on Twitter to take care of you whilst I am gone!

          I must also thank Mr Sutton, as he is the one I get the front pages from. He has been gracious in letting me reblog them for you all. Many thanks and I will chat you soon.

It has been a pleasure to do this for your perusal and I shall resume it when I return from my travels. For now, ladies and gentlemen, blog followers, twitter friends, I repeat the words of the News of the World- thank you and goodbye. I have “met” many lovely people through this and I would love to hug you all. :)

Dziękuję i do widzenia. Do zobaczenia wkrótce. See you soon! It’s been a blast. And the minute the next splash appears is the minute you know I am back in N. Ireland.

Keira Knightley and Jude Law are to star in a British film adaptation of Anna Karenina, it has been announced.

Oscar-winning writer Tom Stoppard will pen the script and Atonement film-maker Joe Wright will direct the epic romance, based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel.

Knightley will play Anna, a married woman who has an affair with a younger soldier. Law has landed the role of her husband, Aleksei Karenin.

The film, which casts Aaron Johnson as Count Vronsky, is due out next year.

Anna Karenina will be Knightley’s third collaboration with Wright. She starred in his 2005 film Pride And Prejudice, followed by the Academy Award-winning movie Atonement two years later.

The Working Title production will begin filming in the UK and Russia this month.

“We anticipate that this will be a defining screen version of Anna Karenina,” said Tim Bevan, of Working Title Films.

James Schamus, from Focus Features - who will distribute the film, said: “Joe Wright is a master film-maker, and with Tom Stoppard’s brilliant screenplay this Anna Karenina will be full of both pageantry and emotion.”

Anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya say they have begun the battle for Bani Walid, one of the last remaining loyalist strongholds. Commanders said they had cleared outlying areas and were within two kilometres of the centre.

They said they hoped to have full control in the next few hours. Bani Walid and three other loyalist-held towns had been given till Saturday to surrender but the anti-Gaddafi forces said they had come under attack.

Fierce fighting has also been reported close to the Gaddafi-held city of Sirte. The BBC’s Richard Galpin, near Bani Walid, says the anti-Gaddafi forces had given a briefing in which they said they had had no choice but to respond to the loyalist attacks.

They said they had made quick progress so far but that they were not engaging in a full military assault as they still wanted to minimise casualties.

They said that four people had so far been killed, including three pro-Gaddafi fighters, and a number of people had been injured. As large numbers of rebels moved towards the town, a number of ambulances have been coming back the other way.

Abdallah Kanshil, a senior official from the interim Libyan leadership, the National Transitional Council (NTC), told Reuters: “[Anti-Gaddafi] fighters are in the north of the city fighting snipers, we have also entered from the east.”

Earlier in the day, there were reports of a barrage of Grad missiles being fired from the town by pro-Gaddafi forces. The NTC says it has been trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution to stand-offs in Gaddafi-held Bani Walid, Jufra, Sabha and Sirte but interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril had warned NTC troops would respond if attacked.

NTC forces have also been preparing munitions near Sirte.

There was a heavy exchange of fire about 60km east of the city, in the Red Valley region which the NTC announced it had captured on Thursday. He says the rebels fired back with anti-aircraft guns but they are still a long way from the city - 45 miles from the eastern approach.

The anti-Gaddafi forces told him they will keep pushing forward and although Sirte may not fall according to their leaders’ timetable, they are sure that it will fall.

Agence France-Presse said the arrival of 10 pro-Gaddafi vehicles on the frontline had sparked two hours of heavy fighting, but that the NTC troops held their position.

Separately on Friday, Ali Kana, a senior general in Col Gaddafi’s forces who commanded troops in the south, was reported to have fled to Niger. Officials in the town of Agadez said a convoy of at least three vehicles carrying a dozen people, including Gen Kana, had arrived. Several convoys of former loyalists are said to have streamed over the border with Niger over the past few weeks.

A number of Col Gaddafi’s aides - including his chief of security Mansour Daw - have reached the capital, Niamey. Officials in Niger, which recently installed democracy after decades of authoritarianism, said they were letting in many sub-Saharan Africans from Libya on humanitarian grounds.

However, the head of President Mahamadou Issoufou’s cabinet, Massaoudou Hassoumi, said on Friday it would respect its commitments to the International Criminal Court (ICC) if Col Gaddafi or his sons entered the country.

The ICC has issued a warrant for crimes against humanity against Col Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and spy chief Abdullah al-Sanussi. Interpol on Friday issued an arrest warrant for the three.

#tomorrowspaperstoday With thanks as always to Nick Sutton on Twitter, who doesn’t mind me reblogging the splashes for your perusal.

#tomorrowspaperstoday As always, the above are used with thanks to Nick Sutton.

Man in his 40s dies of head injuries after police called to Wembley Stadium - where England played Wales earlier. Six arrested - Met Police.

PJ Harvey has become the first person to win the Mercury Music Prize twice, with her album Let England Shake.

The record, which was inspired by the horrors of war, was the bookmakers’ favourite.

Harvey won in 2001, when the ceremony was held on 11 September, but was unable to accept the prize in person because she was on tour in the US.

Accepting the prize the musician said: “Thank you for the recognition of my work on this album.”

The 41-year-old, who was the first female Mercury winner in September 2001 with Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, said: “It’s really good to be here this evening, because when I last won 10 years ago I was in Washington DC watching the Pentagon burning from my hotel window.

“So much has happened since then. This album took me a long time to write. It was very important to me. I wanted to make something meaningful, not just for myself but for other people, and hopefully to make something that would last.”

The album features graphic lyrics about warfare, as well as allusions to other songs and unusually includes the prominent use of an autoharp, played by Harvey.

‘Tough decision’

Corinne Bailey Rae, who was one of the judges, said the panel all agreed that Harvey should be crowned the winner.

“It was a tough decision, but were all in agreement.”

Bailey Rae explained that the lyrics made the record stand out because they were “really imaginative, almost cinematic”.

Harvey beat the likes of Adele, Tinie Tempah, Katy B and Elbow to the £20,000 prize.

Earlier on in the evening she had told reporters her outfit - a full-length white dress with a white leather bodice shaped like a strait-jacket - had been inspired by her album.

The prize, which began in 1992, honours music by British or Irish artists and is based solely on the music on one album.

Electronic band the xx won last year’s prize for their debut album, The xx.

A former UVF man has started giving evidence at a ‘supergrass’ trial in Belfast.

Robert Stewart, 37, was giving evidence against the men he says were in the same UVF gang.

Mr Stewart was given a 75% reduction in his sentence for his part in the murder of loyalist Tommy English in 2000 in return for giving evidence.

He said the UVF chief who ordered the murder told the gunman to try to avoid shooting the rest of the family.

“Try to miss the kids,” is what Mark Haddock, 42, is alleged to have said, with a smirk.

Mr Stewart said Haddock had earlier asked who wanted to carry out the shooting.

He said three of the men in the dock, Ronald Bowe, Jason Loughlin and Alexander Wood volunteered.

He also claimed Darren Moore said he would drive them. Haddock and eight others deny murder.

Fourteen defendants - aged between 32 and 46 - face a total of 97 charges.

It is the first ‘supergrass’ trial in Belfast for 25 years and began amid high security inside and outside the court. It is also the largest paramilitary murder trial in Belfast since the 1980s. There are almost 200 people in the courtroom. Nine of the men are charged with the murder of UDA member Mr English in October 2000.

Two brothers, David and Robert Stewart, are giving evidence against the 14 accused. In return, the two former UVF men got a reduced sentence for their part in the murder.

Thirteen defendants are in the dock - Haddock has been separated, sitting outside the dock surrounded by prison officers.

Two of his co-accused, Darren Moore and Ronald Bowe, were previously charged with trying to murder Haddock in 2006, but charges were dropped when he refused to give evidence.

Supporters of the accused staged a low-key protest outside Laganside courts against the use of so-called supergrasses.

Gordon Kerr QC opened the case for the prosecution and took the court back to Halloween night in 2000 when Mr English was murdered. He outlined the evidence the Stewart brothers will give to the court on how the murder was conceived, planned and carried out.

Mr Kerr told the judge that the brothers claim Haddock and other senior UVF members in north Belfast planned the killing in retaliation for the shooting of a colleague at the height of a bloody feud between the UDA and UVF.

He said the trial would hear evidence from Robert Stewart that Haddock and a number of his co-accused had gathered in a flat close to where Mr English lived on the morning of the murder to discuss the plot.

Mr English was gunned down in front of his wife at his home in the Ballyduff estate in Newtownabbey. The shooting happened shortly after 18:00 GMT and Mr Kerr said Haddock left the flat at about 16:00 GMT. Mr Kerr said Mr English’s name had been mentioned “early on by Haddock”, referring to Robert Stewart’s claims.

The lawyer said that according to Mr Stewart, in the hours before the attack one of the gunmen had claimed that he “wanted it to be all over so he could go home and have a kebab”.

Mr Kerr also said David Stewart claimed Haddock had made it clear that he wanted Mr English dead and had allegedly declared: “I want him done, shot dead.”

The lawyer also recalled Mr English’s wife Doreen’s account of the shooting.

She said a gang of masked men had forced their way in the back door of their home, assaulted her and then pushed through into the house to shoot her husband.

Mr Kerr said that at one point she had heard one of the men shouting to the others to come back and “finish” her husband.

He was then shot again as he lay on the floor.

Both the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and UDA (Ulster Defence Association) are loyalist paramilitary groups responsible for the murder of hundreds of people during the troubles.

The 14 defendants are being represented by 24 barristers and eight firms of solicitors and the trial is expected to last for 11 weeks.

The term supergrass was first used in Northern Ireland in the 1980s when a number of terrorist suspects were convicted on the evidence of former comrades.

However, after a series of appeals, the credibility of the witnesses was called into question and all those convicted under the system were released.

The trial beginning on Tuesday is being held under new legislation introduced in 2005, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which allows a suspect to enter a written agreement to give evidence against other alleged criminals.

The police investigation which led to the arrests followed a damning report by the former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in 2007.

She said a UVF gang based in the Mount Vernon estate in north Belfast had been involved in up to 15 murders and that Special Branch had allowed its informers within the Mount Vernon UVF to act with impunity.belfast

Former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone has told MPs he was “certain” he told James Murdoch about an email which indicated phone hacking at the paper went beyond one rogue reporter. Mr Crone said the email was discussed and “it was the reason that we had to settle the case”. In a previous hearing, News Corp bosses Rupert and James Murdoch said they were not told of an email.

James Murdoch said on Tuesday he stood by his testimony to MPs. The paper’s former editor Colin Myler also told the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that the email was discussed.

          The committee also quizzed former legal director Jon Chapman and human resources director Daniel Cloke in a second round of questions from MPs examining phone hacking.

The discrepancy in the evidence between Mr Crone and Mr Myler and Rupert and James Murdoch hinges on a key document - known as the “for Neville” email. The email was handed by the police to the lawyers of Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA, the footballers’ union, who was suing the News of the World for invading his privacy by hacking into his mobile telephone.

When the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for hacking into phones of the royal household in 2007, the paper insisted the practice was not more widely used.

But the “for Neville” email is said to have implied that the NoW’s chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck was also implicated in malpractices. Giving evidence to the committee, Mr Crone said: “It was clear evidence that phone-hacking was taking place beyond Clive Goodman. It was the reason that we had to settle the case. And in order to settle the case we had to explain the case to Mr Murdoch and get his authority to settle. So certainly it would certainly have been discussed. I cannot remember the detail of the conversation. And there isn’t a note of it. The conversation lasted for quite a short period, I would think probably less than 15 minutes or about 15 minutes. It was discussed. But exactly what was said I cannot recall.”

It was at that meeting that James Murdoch authorised him to reach a settlement Mr Taylor, who was eventually paid £425,000 over the hacking of his phone, the committee heard.

          But Mr Crone insisted that there was no “cover-up” by the company, as the email had been provided to them by the Metropolitan Police after it was seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed with Mr Goodman in 2007. The former legal chief said his priority was to avoid cases being launched by four other individuals whose phones Mulcaire had admitted hacking. “The imperative or the priority at the time was to settle this case, get rid of it, contain the situation as far as four other litigants were concerned and get on with our business,” he said.

News International chairman James Murdoch told the culture committee earlier this year that he was not aware of the email when he approved an out-of-court settlement with Mr Taylor.

Mr Myler and Mr Crone later released a statement saying they did inform him of the email. Mr Murdoch wrote to the committee on 11 August to expand on the evidence he gave that he was not shown or informed of the “for Neville” email.

Following Tuesday’s proceedings, News International released a statement in which Mr Murdoch said: “My recollection of the meeting regarding the Gordon Taylor settlement is absolutely clear and consistent. I stand by my testimony, which is an accurate account of events.” He added: “I was informed, for the first time, that there was evidence that Mulcaire had carried out this interception on behalf of the News of the World. It was for this reason alone that Mr Crone and Mr Myler recommended settlement. It was in this context that the evidence was discussed. They did not show me the email, nor did they refer to Neville Thurlbeck. Neither Mr Myler nor Mr Crone told me that wrongdoing extended beyond Mr Goodman or Mr Mulcaire.”

There will be no decisions until the committee meets next Tuesday on the recall of further witnesses, including Mr Murdoch and former News Corp senior executive Les Hinton.

Culture committee chairman John Whittingdale told the BBC last month that after they had heard more from Mr Myler and Mr Crone, MPs may well choose to recall Mr Murdoch to ask him further questions.

Labour MP Tom Watson, who has pursued the issue of phone hacking, has already called for Mr Murdoch to return. But Mr Murdoch has said he “stands by his testimony” to the committee, in which he said: “If I knew then what we know now we would have taken more action around that and we would have taken more action to get to the bottom of these matters.”

Giving evidence to MPs earlier on Tuesday, both Mr Chapman and Mr Cloke said they were “surprised” by claims from jailed former News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman that phone hacking was widespread. Mr Goodman, the paper’s former royal editor, sent the letter to Mr Cloke, the then News International group human resources director, saying he had been unfairly dismissed after being jailed for phone hacking in 2007.

Mr Goodman alleged that “other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures” and that “this practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference”. Mr Cloke told the committee Mr Goodman’s claim surprised not only him, but Mr Myler and Mr Crone: “Tom said that this was a surprise to him, as it was to everybody else.”

Mr Chapman defended the email review he carried out in reaction to the letter as a “thorough” and a “careful and diligent exercise” but admitted it was limited in its scope. He said there was “nothing that indicated reasonable evidence” of voicemail interception, and “no other illegal activity stood out,” insisting that he did not recall at any point thinking there was material that would require the police to be brought in. But he said it was an “employment related exercise” - not a criminal case - and he was looking for evidence of hacking linked to Clive Goodman’s unfair dismissal appeal.

The Metropolitan Police’s Operation Weeting is investigating claims of phone hacking at News of the World, which was shut down in July after it emerged that the phone of murder victim Milly Dowler had been hacked.

#tomorrowspaperstoday As always, credit must go to Nick Sutton on Twitter for these. Apologies for the lateness.

This will be my final week of doing splashes, as I am leaving for Europe very soon. My final splashes will be up here on Thursday night/Friday morning. There will be a special splash for the morning of September 11^th, 2011.

With that announcement, ladies, gentlemen, readers of my work (and the inside of my head sometimes!), I bring you the front pages for Monday 5^th September.

Before the serious tonight, have a read. i’m not and I wish I was, then maybe I’d have you.

FOR SALE: gold wrist bag (£15), watch (£25) and scarf (£15). Please see a post or two back for pics. Please contact ASAP if interested. PayPal required for payment.

News International boss James Murdoch has declined a $6m (£3.7m) bonus, citing the “current controversy” over phone hacking at the News of the World.

His father, News Corp boss Rupert, received a $12.5m (£7.7) bonus. His total remuneration for the year to 30 June was $33.3m (£20.5m), up 47%.

James Murdoch saw his pay packet rise 74% to $17m, but said declining the bonus was the “right thing to do”.

The phone-hacking scandal led to the closure of the News of the World.

Chief executive Rebekah Brooks was among a number of senior figures to resign over phone hacking, including Les Hinton - who led News Corp’s financial news service Dow Jones.

Mrs Brooks was arrested in July by Metropolitan Police officers investigating phone hacking at the News of the World.

She was editor of the paper when the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler was allegedly intercepted.

In July, Rupert and James Murdoch were grilled by the UK House of Commons culture committee - an occasion the News Corp founder described as the most humble day of his life.

James Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer at News Corp, said in his statement: “In light of the current controversy surrounding News of the World, I have declined the bonus that the company chose to award to me.

“While the financial and operating performance metrics on which the bonus decision was based are not associated with this matter, I feel that declining the bonus is the right thing to do.

“I will consult with the compensation committee in the future about whether any bonus may be appropriate at a later date,” he said.

Resignation

Details about the pay package where released in regulatory filings ahead of News Corp’s annual meeting next month.

News Corp deputy chairman Chase Carey saw his pay rise 16% to $30.2 million.

Meanwhile, News Corp also announced on Friday that its long-time director Thomas Perkins is stepping down.

Mr Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said that, at 80 years old, it was time to move on.

He said the company should not have octogenarians on its board - “unless one of them owns the company, which Rupert does”.

Mr Perkins added that the decision to leave had nothing to do with the phone-hacking affair.

2cajuman2:

imsuggestingcoconutsmigrate:

benedictcumberbatchseyebrows:

gallifreyan-chardonnay:

and always will be my doktah.

Amen, people

All the way and will always be near the very top ranking!

He was, but I grew up with Ten.