A racist madman, according to The Express; a crazy loner with a racist motive, The Independent believes.

For The Telegraph, it could have been an animal rights activist or an Islamic fundamentalist or a neo-nazi or a mimic of the Mardi Gra bomber - or quite simply - a man so possessed by hate that he was ready to murder for it.

The Mail raises the prospect that the culprit was linked to a gangland feud.

A number of papers mention the possibility that Serb activists spurred by the Nato attacks on Yugoslavia were to blame.

But The Guardian quotes a spokesman for the Serbian Information Centre in London as saying: "Serbia hasn't broken a pane of glass in this country."

Whoever it was, The Times believes that Brixton is a resilient place.

Refugee column 'warning'

Its streets hum with life, the paper says. No deranged terrorist can destroy their vibrant variety.

The Express reports in its main story that an RAF pilot warned an American colleague not to attack the ill-fated refugee convoy in Kosovo only minutes before the raid.

The paper - quoting what it describes as senior defence sources - says the British pilot sent a radio message to the American F-16 saying he could clearly see civilian vehicles in the convoy from his Harrier jet.

The Times says an ecological disaster appears to be unfolding in Belgrade after Nato bombed a combined chemicals, fertiliser and refinery complex on the banks of the Danube.

The report is accompanied by a picture showing a huge cloud of what it says are toxic gases towering over the city's northern skyline.

The paper says scientists in Belgrade have warned that the pollution will spread downstream to Romania and Bulgaria.

A number of papers report that the Conservative deputy leader, Peter Lilley, is planning to make a speech this week urging his party to reject private sector solutions for public services.

The Mail suggests the appeal will mark a seismic shift in Tory philosophy, dramatically drawing a line beneath the Thatcher era of radical reform.

Men's reading secrets revealed

A number of papers carry the disclosure that the five men accused of the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence were given a two-week break by Granada Television in a luxury holiday home in Perthshire after their recent appearance on ITV.

The woman who rented out the house is quoted in the Express and the Guardian as saying she thought they were pop stars looking for a country retreat away from the limelight - and would not have given the property to them had she known their identities.

Finally, the Times presents research which it says may have solved the riddle of why men flip through magazines from the back, while women start from the front.

The paper says observations of men at bookstalls and newsstands revealed a simple truth: men are so conditioned to turning to the back pages of newspapers for the sport that they have become virtually incapable of reading anything from the front.

The deputy editor of a leading men's title tells the paper the magazine has placed one of its main features on the inside back page for this reason.

But the editor of a women's magazine has a different conclusion.

She says women start at the front because it makes more sense.