Newspaper headlines: 'Ring of steel' around King and 'protest warning'

Presentational grey line
By BBC News
Staff
EPA

Republican protesters will reportedly be allowed to line the route of the royal procession during the Coronation

Preparations for the Coronation feature on a number of Thursday's front pages.

The Daily Mail says the events will be surrounded by "a royal ring of steel" in the biggest policing operation in UK history. The paper says the Metropolitan Police will deploy vans with roof-mounted cameras and facial-recognition technology - which can analyse thousands of people every minute and recognise, as the paper puts it, terror suspects, wanted criminals and known troublemakers.

The human rights organisation Liberty tells the Guardian that the use of live facial recognition at the Coronation is extremely worrying. The group says the technology is a "dystopian tool and dilutes all our rights and liberties".

The Daily Mirror leads with the Met's warning that any demonstrators intent on obstructing the Coronation can expect "very swift action". A warning about police powers - under the new Public Order Act - has been sent to anti-monarchy group Republic, whose president Graham Smith described the letter as "intimidatory". He expects about 1,700 protesters to gather in Trafalgar Square on Saturday.

According to the Daily Telegraph, republican demonstrators will be allowed to line the route of the royal procession, holding banners that denounce the King. Officers have been advised to engage with protesters rather than try to remove them.

The i leads with what it calls a UK plan for the King to "help lead a Brexit detox with Europe". It says the government is keen to show Britain can still work with EU countries and that it is hoped the King can play a part following the success of his visit to Germany in March. A friend of the King tells the paper he is "above politics" but will do "what is best for the country".

Reuters

A new drug has been hailed as the "beginning of the end" for Alzheimer's disease

The Guardian highlights a report by academics from Durham and Cambridge universities who have found that some of Britain's most elite schools benefited from the slave trade. Eton College, Christ's Hospital school and Liverpool Blue Coat are among 29 schools said to have received substantial donations from people who profited from slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Times says Nato believes that Russia has planted explosives on critical European undersea infrastructure. The paper says the assessment is based on information from intelligence services and private companies that run key oil and gas pipelines, electricity connectors and telecoms cables.

And the Daily Express welcomes the promising results of a trial of a new drug for Alzheimer's disease. Writing in the paper, doctor Richard Oakley from the Alzheimer's Society says the success of the medicine, called Donanemab, means "we are at the beginning of the end" of the condition.