What the papers say

Journalist Mike Philpott takes a look at what is making the headlines in Wednesday's morning papers.

A memo from the chief constable criticising nationalist politicians makes the lead in the Belfast Telegraph.

The paper says Sir Hugh Orde accuses some of "insulting the PSNI, its staff and retired colleagues".

It reports that the email was sent on Saturday, after an intense week of political debate about policing.

The News Letter has an interview with Mavis McFaul, whose partner, David Caldwell, was murdered by the Real IRA in 2002.

Speaking after his inquest in Limavady, she told the paper that she "harbours more hatred for the vandals who have repeatedly desecrated his grave than for the people who killed him".

She said she had taken out an insurance policy on his headstone.

She told the paper that she harbours more hatred for the vandals who have repeatedly desecrated his grave than for the people who killed him

Attacks on medical staff are the subject of editorials after police officers were assigned to Belfast City Hospital's casualty unit at weekends.

The Irish News says it's a sad reflection on this society that "hospital corridors are not havens of safety".

It believes there will be two measures of success during the three-month pilot exercise.

The first, it says, will be if the number of attacks is reduced and the other will be "an increase in the number of people charged and convicted for violent attacks".

The News Letter says matters "have descended to a sorry state when police have to be drafted in".

It joins the Irish News in calling for zero tolerance of violent behaviour.

The Irish Times reports under its main headline that the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has accepted the British government's decision to press ahead with assembly elections on 7 March, although he tells the paper that he "would have liked more clarity and more certainty about the intentions of the DUP".

The Irish Independent has the fascinating story of how a surgeon from University Hospital in Galway was prompted into action when he saw government minister Conor Lenihan on television just before Christmas.

He noticed a lump on Mr Lenihan's jaw and phoned his office the next day to say that he should go immediately to hospital to have it checked out.

It turned out to be a tumour and although it was not malignant, it was dangerously close to his facial nerve.

He noticed a lump on Mr Lenihan's jaw and phoned his office the next day to say that he should go immediately to hospital to have it checked out

He has now undergone surgery to remove it, and tells the paper of his gratitude to the surgeon who saw the warning signs.

The headlines in the cross-channel papers will make bleak reading for Number 10 Downing Street.

Most focus on the re-arrest of Lord Levy in the loans-for-honours investigation.

The Daily Telegraph says it has widened the investigation dramatically.

Steve Richards, writing in the Independent, says the inquiry "began as a serious diversion".

But now it threatens to overwhelm all other matters, "reducing serious policy issues to minor matters as Downing Street languishes in a fearful gloom".

The Guardian and the Times both report that Tuesday's events make it "more likely that the prime minister will be interviewed by the police again before the investigation concludes".

Finally, several papers report that the French are bringing back the paid siesta for workers after the practice fell into disuse.

The Times says that the country's health minister has promised that if a pilot project is successful, he has no problem with the whole nation taking an afternoon nap.