22/12/2016 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be

With me are journalist and broadcaster Rachel Shabi,

and deputy political editor at the Telegraph,

Tomorrow's front pages: The Metro leads with news that the British

public have helped raise more than ?75,000 for the family

of the murdered Polish lorry driver whose vehicle was hijacked and used

The Times says the Queen is apparently disappointed

with Theresa May, after the PM declined to share plans for Brexit

The Financial Times says China has warned Donald Trump that

co-operation is the only way forward, after the US

President-elect appointed a China hawk to run a new White House

The Daily Telegraph highlights claims that some of Britain's

leading universities are becoming no-go zones for Jewish students,

The Daily Mirror leads with the story of shoppers diving

for cover, as e-cigarette batteries blow up inches from a pram.

The Guardian says violent and abusive men are being allowed

to confront and cross-examine their former partners

And the Daily Express warns that the UK faces violent Christmas

storms, with 90 mph gales and torrential rain.

The story of the week has been the attack on the Christmas market in

Berlin. We will start with the times. German spies knew that the

suspect had talked of a suicide attack. So much is coming out about

this man, the chief suspect in this appalling atrocity. Yes, Anis

Amri... When you get these horrific events there is always this clamour

to try and find answers about why it wasn't stopped and build better

protections for the future. There are a string of quite worrying

snippets which are coming out about what the intelligence services in

Germany knew about the lead suspect. The Times brings out a couple of

them tomorrow. This bloke had talked about a suicide mission, the

security services had talked about him saying that maybe I will go on a

suicide mission but they dismiss them because of suggestions were too

vague and they didn't think they were that credible. He was also seen

visiting a mosque for the attack which was linked to Islamist. And

the third debt which is still worrying given the person is on the

run, is that footage of him has emerged going to a mosque close to

the Christmas market. Taken together it does raise questions about why he

wasn't apprehended. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner pointed

out that the problem is that if you were to keep tabs on everyone with

links to Islamist group or said something vaguely dodgy than you

would be tying up so many people, at an enormous cost, that you just

can't do it. You do have to prioritise. And the fact that this

man seemed to be grandstanding, didn't really seem to have a

definite plan, in terms of a terror attack, made the German authorities

think he is not someone we should continue to pursue. I think that

sounds right. It is not just that you would be chewing up resources,

it is that you would actually be requiring a more powers to do those

things. And that is always going to be a balance, whether you think we

should give up more powers in the fight against terrorism. And of

course we are all terrified, and this was a horrific attack, and we

would all like there to be answers. But it is interesting, this whole

thing of lorry attacks, you can Paratoo a country like Israel, which

has much more surveillance. -- you compare it to. At levels which other

countries would not be comfortable with, a higher level of security, a

level that we might not be OK with. But it also can't deal with these

random lorry attacks. We are dealing with something quite different, and

it is not necessarily that our security and police services are

doing anything wrong. It might actually be that they are doing all

they can. The changing nature of the threat is something that is

certainly keeping everyone on their toes, and everyone guessing. If

there is an upside to this horrible story, then perhaps it is this. Go

fund the Berlin hero, British cash floods in for a Polish trucker's

widow. The Polish trucker whose truck was essentially hijacked in

this awful terror attack in Berlin, and who put up a tremendous

struggle, it sounds like, to try and stop this attack from happening, or

to try and make it less brutal than it actually was, try and steer it of

course, it sounds like he really put up a tremendous fight to try and do

something, lost his life. And since then, a lot of donors have answered

a call from Dave Duncan, who put up a crowd funding for this Polish

man's wife, and his widow, and his teenage son. They have managed to

raise ?75,000 so far, which is wonderful and heartening, obviously,

at an awful time. Just before Christmas, as well, to lose the

breadwinner, this is something that might help a little bit. But also

shows, I think, just the level of violence that must have existed

inside that cab, as he tried to wrestle with this guy, who was

aiming for this Christmas market. And this poor man, this Polish

driver, tried to stop the carnage that was about to unfold. He got an

indication of what was happening, and fought and gave his life to try

and stop it, and an unimaginable tragedy for his wife and teenage

son. You just hope this outpouring of kindness and generosity, from the

Brits and others, hopefully sends a message. Indeed, all right. The

front page of the Telegraph. Now clearly, salt is something that Mr

Putin and Mr Trump only put on their chips. It is terrifying. It is

absolutely terrifying. Just to explain Salt, the strategic Arms

Limitation Treaty, it is what Reagan and Gorbachev used to bring down

their stockpile of weapons. Now we have these two leaders talking about

increasing their stock piles of weapons. Can you imagine a more

powerful tweet than one which has overturned 30 years of American and

Russian foreign policy? It is a scary prospect. Since the end of the

Cold War there has been a systematic descaling of nuclear arsenals across

the world, both in America and the USSR, dropping down. And then within

the space of a couple of hours you have Putin saying we are thinking

about strengthening the nuclear potential of our strategic nuclear

forces and then Donald Trump, on Twitter, how else, says he will

greatly expanded nuclear capability. It is a genuinely terrifying

prospect that these two nations would begin to get into that. But

the argument goes, some are suggesting, that the upside of this,

if there is an upside, that Donald Trump is actually talking to Iran

and North Korea. Yes. So we are now in a situation where the

President-elect's quite significant communications about quite

significant issues via the medium of Twitter are then being decoded by

his team. His team have to try and understand what the hell he is on

about. They are saying that you know what, this is actually a deep

proliferation statement. I can see how you might have missed that, but

that is what it was -- de- proliferation. I think we need that

clarity. I am not sure that would bring clarity. Maybe it wouldn't.

That is part of the problem. Some of these stories are beginning with

Donald Trump has tweeted again, XYZ, and fundamentally, yes, there is an

issue with what he is saying, for some people, but it is the manner in

which he is doing it which is quite concerning. There was a quote from

Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, talking about British

foreign secretaries, where he said they are either dull or they are

dangerous. He went on to say that Doris Johnson isn't dull. The same

applies to American diplomacy -- Boris Johnson. Words matter when you

are in an administration at that level. Going back to the times, the

Queen frustrated with Theresa May over Brexit secrecy. It seems that

Theresa May's reluctance to divulge any kind of specifics about Brexit

have disappointed not just so many of us, but have gone all the way up

to disappointing the Queen. According to this report, the Queen

and the Duke were quite looking forward, when Theresa May came to

Balmoral a couple of months after coming into power, they were quite

looking forward to perhaps a little bit of a secret exchange of

information. But unfortunately all they got was what the rest of us are

getting, which is that Brexit means Brexit, Marm. Does this mean that

she was holding back, Theresa May, or that she doesn't have anything to

say? There is political bite to the story which will hurt Number Ten.

There is a genuine frustration building about the lack of

information. The referendum was in June, and we are about to have

January and a couple of months, and there appears to be a frustration

building about not enough details about where we are heading imagine.

Is that because she is being scrupulously careful, before making

any public statement, or is it, as critics say, they are beginning to

just be totally... Realise the scale of this negotiation process? But if

even the Queen is reportedly getting frustrated with the lack of

information, then it does get to the point when this is becoming a

running narrative. Building up of steam, isn't it? A disturbing story

on the front of the Guardian. The secret abuse of women in the Family

Court. Violent former partners are allowed to take part in cross

examinations. This is a horrifying story about family courts where

apparently, because of cuts to legal aid, men and women are now

representing themselves more in these courts, which has created

situations where people who have been abusive to women are then

allowed to cross examine them in court, sometimes the hours. A lawyer

for the south-east who deals with these issues says he has seen this

happen in hundreds of cases. He has told the Guardian, and he is urging

that even if it means putting a student liar in the situation, --

student lawyer in the situation, even if that is what it takes to

stop these women being cross-examined by sometimes violent

and abusive partners, just trying to figure out a way where this duration

doesn't happen, because it is obviously horrific and traumatising.

It is the adversarial system that we have, isn't it? The example they

give is really quite horrific. In one case a woman was cross-examined

for hours by her ex-husband despite him being the subject of restraining

order. So she has gone to the court and got protection from this bloke,

and now she is being... Courts are undermining the protections being

put in place. Presumably people are allowed to represent themselves, but

do you want to totally withdraw that as a right? Is clearly one of those

terrible side-effects. And finally, e-cigarette AB horror. Shoppers

dived full horror as e-cigarette batteries blow up, in a guy's

pocket. Our jaws dropped at this front page, and the video is just as

scary. It is out of nowhere and the middle of a supermarket, it bursts

in his pocket, and having read a little further down, he was actually

carrying a battery, a spare battery, that goes into one of these vaping

cigarettes, and that came into contact with something metal. It

wasn't the e-cigarette itself, but the spare battery. These tiny

lithium batteries, they are incredibly powerful. We saw those

phones blowing up and South Korea. And that close to a pram. That is

the terrifying thing, it is such an EMS. Many, many thanks to you for

coming in and looking at some of the stories behind the headlines.

This is my last Papers for this year, so a Merry Christmas to you

and happy New Year. Coming up now, it is Sportsday.

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