Papers focus on bomb horror

For Friday's papers, another atrocity in the Middle East produces another indelible image.

On the front page of the Daily Mail, three Israeli policemen examine a tangled baby buggy outside a wrecked pizza restaurant in Jerusalem.

Even by the blood-soaked standards of Middle East politics, says The Sun, the photographs of the bombing are truly shocking.

But though the pictures speak volumes, the words are more telling.

The Independent carries graphic eye-witness accounts of the moment of the blast, and the appalling injuries it inflicted.

Many of the corpses were very small, says the paper, for the restaurant was a favourite with children.

The Mirror describes the scene as a sea of blood, with bodies lying among the pizza boxes. To call this the Holy Land is a joke, it says.

Nevertheless, the Guardian calls for restraint by Israel.

The dead, it says in an editorial, do not cry out for vengeance; they cry out for peace.

Inquiry row

"A promise cynically broken" - that is the Mail's verdict on the government's decision not to order a full public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

It claims farmers have been cruelly misled, and condemns what it calls the "sneering contempt" from the Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, for the idea that voters have a right to an open inquiry.

The Daily Telegraph also reckons the three separate investigations announced on Thursday will not get to the whole truth.

It is the logistical and political side of the crisis that need proper examination, it says.

There must be rigorous questioning of officials and members of the government - yet this now seems unlikely.

The Times reports from the Devon County Show, where foot-and-mouth restrictions have meant that there are no farm livestock on display, for the first time in the event's 106-year history.

Instead there were tractors, holiday reps, country clothes and plenty of fudge - together with farmers swapping pictures of their animals, and exchanging foot-and-mouth horror stories.

Career choice

Lord Archer's early transfer, from Belmarsh Prison in south-east London to Wayland jail in Norfolk, takes him nearer to his family home, but no further from controversy.

An expert on the prison system tells the Telegraph that someone is clearly pulling strings for him.

Inmates normally expect to be in Belmarsh for the best part of six months.

According to the Mail prisoner "FF 8282", as he is known, now has an important career decision to make.

Will he work as a tailor, roof tiler, bricklayer - or muck out the pigsties on the prison farm - which are among the jobs available to those serving time at Wayland.

Family fare

Finally, most papers report on a plot twist that could easily have leapt straight from the pages of a Jeffrey Archer blockbuster.

It happened when it finally dawned on taxi driver Barry Bagshaw, that the fare he had just picked up from a motel in Brighton was the son he last saw, 34 years ago.

"We had a hug and there were tears on both sides," he tells the Times.

The Mirror seizes on his admission that the encounter left him completely lost for words.

Surely, says the paper, a world first in the history of taxi driving.