What the papers say

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

Emergency workers at the scene of the accident in Royal Avenue, where a teenage girl was crushed by a bus, are pictured on the front of the Belfast Telegraph, under the headline "rush hour horror".

Inside, the paper's editorial focuses on the so-called Disappeared, after those remains were found in the Wicklow mountains.

It says, now that Sinn Féin is in government there is a moral imperative on republicans to end, where possible, the grief of the relatives of the disappeared.

The possible cut to the drink driving limit, announced by Environment Minister Sammy Wilson, is top story in the News Letter.

But, as the paper points out, not everyone thinks that cutting road deaths is as simple as reducing permitted alcohol levels.

The AA's Andrew Howard says detection and enforcement of any new drink-drive limit is essential.

And it's thumbs down for three of Northern Ireland's big four high street banks in the Irish News - they have failed to pass on the interest rate cut to borrowers.

So far, only the Ulster Bank has passed the cut to mortgage holders, while the Northern Bank, Bank of Ireland and First Trust are still "reviewing" their options.

Meanwhile, hard-pressed homeowners are suffering, says the Consumer Council.

Gang crime is the topic in the both the main Dublin papers.

The Irish Times says Taoiseach Brian Cowen has promised the speedy introduction of new surveillance legislation, following the murder of Shane Geoghegan in Limerick.

Gardai are closing the net on the Limerick man's killers, says the Irish Independent - but it adds that they need the public to help unearth vital evidence to bring the gunmen to justice.

The distressing case of Baby P, who suffered many terrible injuries at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and another man, leads many of the cross-channel papers.

The Times says the outcome raises old questions about child protection, and about the success - or otherwise - of reforms put into place after the death of Victoria Climbie, who died in horribly similar circumstances in the same London borough of Haringey.

The Guardian reports that MPs are planning a year-long investigation into what it calls the "Complexion of the Commons", amid worries that its members are seen as a narrow, self-serving elite, who bear no relation to the population as a whole.

Harriet Harman, leader of the Commons, tells the paper that the house would lose legitimacy if people saw it as disconnected from people's lives.

The investigation could end in all-women and all-black shortlists for parliamentary candidates.

And finally, fluffy-tailed rodents seems to be popping up all over the papers this weather, and the Daily Telegraph brings news from the frontline of the squirrel war - how to stop squirrels stealing seeds from the birdtable.

Dust them with chilli powder, or Tabasco, or peri-peri sauce.

The seeds that is, not the birds. The RSPB recommends this approach.

But the Telegraph is sceptical. There have been so many false dawns, it says gloomily.

Squirrels have learned to leap over sonic barriers and the dung of lions.

No doubt there is a grim grey squirrel out there this morning developing a taste for chilli, it says - and soon they'll settle for nothing else.