What the papers say

Journalist Malachi O'Doherty reviews Tuesday's morning papers.

An early morning booze-up in a police station led to a car crash and the death of Constable Geoffrey Milligan.

His inquest makes the front page lead in the News Letter this morning.

The Irish News prefers to lead with Ulster Unionist Craigavon councillor Fred Crowe who supports his nephew appealing against a conviction for murder.

The nephew, William Beggs, was convicted of killing 18-year-old Barry Wallace after what the paper calls, one of the most gruesome murder trials in recent history.

Bertie Ahern is grinning and bearing it as he is hugged by a figure in the familiar web patterned head wrap, and perhaps counting himself lucky that Yasser Arafat is not kissing him.

This is the front page photograph in the Irish Times this morning, where the lead story is the growing worldwide fear of anthrax in the post.

Inside, Fintan O'Toole reflects on the new custom of hanging chimes and toys on a tree at the Holy Angels plot in Glasnevin cemetery for miscarried babies.

'Facing al-Qaeda'

He takes this as evidence that "the prevailing culture has become more civilised, more tender, more respectful, not as a result of the official institutions - which traditionally treated miscarriage as a shameful thing to be forgotten - but in spite of them".

The Mirror announces a world exclusive on its front page - a face to face encounter with the Bin Laden terrorists.

An emissary from al-Qaeda told Wayne Francis in his hotel in Jalalabad: "The British people should know the truth. There will be terrible consequences if the bombing of Afghanistan continues."

The emissary told him that Sheik Osama is well and confident of winning the war, but he is angry with Tony Blair for trying to silence his voice by asking broadcasters not to use his videotaped messages.

The anthrax scare and the progress of the war make the main leads in the London broadsheets.

The Guardian leads with George Bush's suggestion that the anthrax powder being posted to people in the US may be coming from Bin Laden.

The paper says that internment of foreign terrorist suspects is being proposed as part of a package of new sweeping security measures.

Jeannette Winterson in her Guardian column attacks those who sneer at the "sob mob" the artists and writers opposed to the bombing.

Star Trek

She writes: "I don't want to be moral and high minded, well actually I do."

She says: "Who reading Bin Laden's speeches can doubt that the 11 September attacks were carried out from the highest motives and in the name of freedom? There is no cynicism in the man, he has never heard of a spin doctor.

"We need not sympathise with him to recognise a gulf between the pragmatic concerns of the west and the fervent feelings of the east."

And if that doesn't alarm you, read Stephen Hawkings in the Daily Telegraph warning of the dangers that we will, by accident or design create a virus that will destroy us.

He says: "I don't think we will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space.

"Fortunately warp drive as envisaged in Star Trek may become possible and genetic engineering may be able to adapt us to space travel."

Not to worry then.