What the papers say

Journalist Malachi O'Doherty takes a look at what is making the headlines in Tuesday's morning newspapers.

All the London broadsheets and most of the tabloids share a single preoccupation and that is Cherie Blair.

The Mail's headline: The Truth, The Whole Truth and Anything but the Truth.

The paper claims that Cherie Blair's integrity is in ruins after revelations of her personal intervention in conman Peter Foster's battle against deportation.

The Mail profiles two of Cherie's friends, Carole Caplin and Fiona Miller and argues a little implausibly that the Blair family has been embarrassed by Carole sunbathing in topless and wearing low cut dresses.

The paper says the women have battled to control Cherie.

'Intrusive media'

The Daily Telegraph makes the point that the disclosure of Mrs Blair's contacts with Peter Foster's solicitors appears to contradict an earlier denial by Number Ten that she had intervened in the immigration proceedings against him.

The Guardian's Martin Kettle argues that the prime minister's spouse needs a staff and status too, to fend off an intrusive media, and says that to suggest there is a tide of sleaze lapping at the Blair government is simply demented.

He compares the press campaign against the Blairs to the hounding of the Clintons, which he covered for the paper.

He's 24 years old. He stabbed his girlfriend 41 times and by all accounts this morning her instinct to be shot of him was right.

Andrew Robinson is facing life in jail after being convicted yesterday of the gruesome murder of Julieanne Osborne, and some of this morning's papers report that he was a member of Johnny Adair's C Company of the UFF based in the lower Shankill.

The Irish News leads with a report that Robinson was questioned by police about the shooting of a Catholic from Ardoyne in December 2000.

Threats to quit talks

The Mirror quotes Julieanne's stepmother Diane saying: "He seemed to believe he could get away with it. He even threatened to kill me once when I had a go at him for the way he treated Julieanne."

The political news is that the Ulster Unionists are threatening to quit the talks process over Irish Government legislation facilitating the continuation of the work of cross-border bodies without assembly endorsement of their decisions.

Dan Keenan in the Irish Times quotes a Stormont source saying that the measure is neither expansionist nor an example of joint authority.

That story makes the lead in the News Letter which reports that the legislation has forced anti-Agreement unionist Robert McCartney to break his boycott of the round table talks.

Also in the Irish Times and the News Letter and the Irish News: reports of an action being brought against the MoD by a former soldier called Patrick Murphy who claims sectarian harassment and intimidation when he was posted to Portadown.

Mr Murphy told the fair employment tribunal that he changed his name and religious designation on the advice of a recruiting sergeant, but that a colour sergeant later told him: "I know you're a Taig", and said he was going to tell everyone.

That hearing continues.