What the papers say

Journalist Mike Philpott takes a look at what is making the headlines in Tuesday's newspapers.

All eyes are on south Armagh, after the discovery of a 600lb bomb.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, it was the biggest bomb found in Northern Ireland for eight years.

The paper's security specialist, Brian Rowan, says it wasn't just an attack on the security forces, but "also an attack on Sinn Fein and its strategy" by dissident republicans. The Sun says the terrorists were plotting mayhem.

The Irish Independent makes the point that the bomb was 20% bigger than the device that killed 29 people in Omagh.

The Irish Times says the police took four days to find it because a telephone warning was so vague. It was finally discovered, it says, after more information was passed on by a member of the public.

The Irish News criticises the police for the time it took, but it says a greater concern is the continuing threat from dissidents "who are determined to destroy lives and undermine peace and stability".

But the News Letter says the police are overstretched in large areas of Northern Ireland and the only people who can't see it are senior officers and the government. It concludes that "we deserve a security policy that's based on what's really happening" on the ground.

Several papers detect the scent of a general election campaign.

A columnist in the Guardian says it all began yesterday, and "boy is it going to be a long one".

But it's not impressed by the first salvoes fired by David Cameron and Alistair Darling.

It accuses both men's speeches of falling short of the level of honest language and clarity that the voters need.

The Times criticises Mr Cameron for his comments on putting restrictions on the pay and perks of politicians. The proposals may be popular, it says, but that doesn't make them wise.

The Daily Mail, though, is firmly in Mr Cameron's corner. It praises him for "promising to drive the gravy train into the buffers".

The Daily Star praises him too - at last, somebody is listening to the great British public, it says.

There's bad news for air travellers in the Times. It reports under its main headline that government advisers are recommending that plane passengers should be subject to a new tax to halt the rise in air travel.

The paper says the Committee on Climate Change has said billions of pounds need to be raised to compensate developing countries for the damage that aviation does to the environment.

According to the paper, the committee also challenges the government's decision to build a third runway at Heathrow. It suggests that airlines need to be forced to share the burden of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.

Finally, a couple of stories about the fact that Wednesday is the ninth day of the ninth month of 2009.

The Daily Mail reports that three couples - all of whom work for the emergency services - are getting married today, the shortened form of the date, of course, being 999.

The paper also points out that some doomsayers have named today as the date the world will end. But the paper says the most exciting thing that's likely to happen is the release of a Beatles computer game.

It points out that predictors of Armageddon have had a miserable few years. The millennium passed without a single horseman of the apocalypse, and 6/6/06 - the number of the beast - turned out to be a pretty uneventful Tuesday.