Newspaper headlines: 'Nottingham rampage' and 'Mortgage misery looming'

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By BBC News
Staff
Handouts

Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar were stabbed to death

The two students who were killed in Nottingham are pictured on most of the front pages.

The Sun says they were "sports-mad teens" who died when a lone knifeman went on the rampage. The Daily Mail reports they were minutes away from their university halls of residence at the time. The Daily Telegraph says it was an "apparently random" attack and sources tell the paper the suspect is a west African migrant who had settled legally in the UK. The city is in shock, according to the Guardian. The paper says the murders have prompted Nottingham University's student union to cancel its graduation ball, which was due to be held last night.

The Daily Telegraph has details about Boris Johnson's last-minute submission to the Commons Privileges Committee, which is preparing to publish its conclusions on whether he lied to Parliament about lockdown parties. The paper describes the letter as a "point-by-point" rebuttal of the MPs' findings, which Mr Johnson's allies want published alongside the official report. A source tells the Telegraph, "there should be something on the record from Boris, saying what a load of baloney this all is".

The i newspaper focuses on mortgage rates, saying they're rapidly approaching levels that caused misery in the 1980s. The paper says a "major crunch" is coming as millions of borrowers come off cheap fixed-rate deals. The Financial Times highlights the governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey's warning that inflation is taking a lot longer to come down than expected. The paper says the rise in wages revealed in official data yesterday is far above the level that the Bank thinks is consistent with controlling prices.

"A blame game that will let Britain down" is the Sun's view of the Covid inquiry following its first day of evidence. The paper says there are signs the inquiry is turning into a free-for-all for lefty Remainers, after the inquiry's lawyer said that planning for a no-deal Brexit hampered Britain's pandemic preparedness. The Daily Express condemns the comments as "bonkers". The Daily Mail says it's a troubling start and urges the inquiry not to become an exercise in public shaming.

The Daily Mirror is among the papers to pick up on research suggesting most women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer can now expect to become "long-term survivors". A 22-year study by Oxford University is said to have found that, for some, the risk of death within five years is now 0.2%, because of medical advances. The Express says it's a cause for real celebration and proof that science saves lives.

Many of the papers discuss the work of the US novelist Cormac McCarthy following his death at the age of 89. The Times says he was routinely acclaimed as America's greatest writer and, like William Faulkner and Mark Twain, a master of vernacular but lyrical prose. The paper notes his devotion to his craft and recalls him saying that writing is gold, and anything else a waste of time. For the Guardian, Cormac McCarthy was revered, with his bleak and apocalyptic visions of the American south drawing fans from the writer Saul Bellow, to Oprah Winfrey.

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