10/08/2017 The Papers

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

With me are Martin Bentham, Home Affairs Editor

for the London Evening Standard, and Rowena Mason, Deputy political

Tomorrow's front pages, starting with...

The Daily Telegraph reports on calls for courts to treat Asian gangs

who groom white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals.

It follows the conviction of 18 people in Newcastle yesterday.

The Independent has a photograph released by the North Korean regime

Its story is about the standard of rented homes - it says millions

of people are living in homes that contain serious safety hazards.

The Independent has a photograph released by the North Korean regime

appearing to show thousands of people rallying in

The Daily Mail focuses on the contaminated eggs scandal,

saying supermarkets are 'scrambling' to clear the shelves of products

The Times reports that the scandal is likely to be far bigger than has

been reported. The Metro has the same story,

and the Food Standards Agency's estimation that 700,000 of the Dutch

eggs were imported. The Guardian says that people living

on estate in South London say they will have to leave because the

buildings have been at risk of collapse for decades.

Let's start with Donald Trump. Does not feature as much as you might

expect. Trump's new threat to North Korea. We will see the daily

Mirror's look later. He is saying that the rhetoric may be has not

been strong enough. But in the same statement, says we cannot rule out

negotiations. We're not sure which direction he is heading. They have

been all the threats flying between North Korea and the United States

and it is hard to see how Donald Trump could wrap it up further

having said he wanted to bring down fire and theory on North Korea. He

said today that wasn't even scary enough. So it is really quite

astonishing. We were discussing earlier that it is not featured very

heavily on the front pages, maybe it says something about how people view

the credibility of the threats materialising into some action.

Apart from the Mirror, they have a story saying that the US would quite

like the UK to help them spy on Kim's nuclear bases. It says they

could be involved but what would be the risk involves two RAF planes?

Not very much, they are unlikely to be shot down. Whether it happens or

not I don't know, the bigger risk is the nuclear Armageddon that might

break out. There is not much risk to our planes, probably. But as Rowena

says, it is interesting that you have footage of people in why, some

quite relaxed about it, saying they have heard all about it. People hear

my filly bit more nervous if we were in the firing line. The interesting

thing about this was that trump's rhetoric is quite bellicose and Al

Gore was making the point on Radio 4 that it is not trump being a

hothead, this is a problem that other illustrations in the past have

allowed to develop and therefore it is a big problem that is going to

have to be confronted. And whether this method of his girls put

pressure on China to exert some influence on North Korea and achieve

something, it has achieved something through the sanctions of the UN

Security Council, maybe all these hot words will lead to something

actually being achieved. On the other hand, there is the massive

danger that people could talk themselves into something abysmal.

And North Korea's response is that if all think about putting its

military plan into action and firing a missile very near to Guam.

Far more newspapers on the egg story. The Daily Mail... The Food

Standards Agency saying that 21,000 eggs were affected and it turned out

to be 700,000! There is a question about not least in the Belgian and

the Netherlands where they knew about this and the warnings were not

passed on, and we are discovering this because they have arrived on

our shelves in greater numbers and without thought. It is hard to get

too worked up about it given that there doesn't seem to be much health

risk according to the Food Standards Agency. Fortunately, it is something

not very desirable, but probably with no negative consequences to

people eating it. I think part of it, why it is interesting, is that

although this pesticide not supposed to pose a health to human health,

there's an element creeping in about a cover-up which is why people are

suspicious. The numbers went up from 21,000 to 700,000, they think, and

people might have been eating these eggs for quite a few months. So

people may be beginning to doubt whether it is more harmful than the

Food Standards Agency has been making out? Goes back to other

controversies like Bobo horse meat, this issue of the food chain, --

like the horse meat scandal, the issue of the food chain, how many

countries is food going through before it reaches our shelves. Do we

trust people providing our food and the people monitoring?

The Times, modern slavery widespread in the UK. The tip of the iceberg

that we have established. The National Crime Agency saying that

every large towns and cities probably -- has people involved in

this kind of slavery whether it is in agriculture or domestic labour.

It is a really shocking story and modern slavery has been a huge focus

of Theresa May which she was in the Home Office and tried to carry on

when she was in Number Ten but the interesting element of the story is

that prosecutions of slavery and trafficking fell last year from 129

to 96. It is obviously taking some time for all these new measures that

Theresa May brought in to clamp down on modern slavery to come through

and work. To be fair to the National Crime Agency, they made the point

that rather like terrorism, people are not necessarily charged under

terrorism offences, they are charged... Well, not normal, but

non-terrorist related offences. These may have been charged with

rape or drugs or money-laundering offences. So they may not reflect

the full picture. What is true, is that the anti-slavery Commissioner

raised concerns that the anti-fashion -- the National Crime

Agency and not been acting on information received and more

broadly, they were saying today that they were shocked by the scale of it

so it seems as if there has been a slight slowness to get on top of it.

Now people are getting aware of it and realising the scale.

Rowena, tell us about this Guardian story, fresh concerns over safety of

tower blocks. Another shocking story by Peter Walker. It is about some

tower blocks in south London where hundreds of people have been told to

leave their homes because there is a different risk to the tower blocks,

not the fire risk that had such tragic consequences in brimful

tower, it is to do with gas safety and they have been told that they

have to switch off all kinds of gas appliances and potentially move out.

Decamp, is the word they use, decamp for several weeks or days in which

is a strange word to have to use to them. This is in Southwark Council's

territory. It says that these blocks, and may apply elsewhere,

after the disaster many years ago, southern tower blocks were built

with these big slabs of concrete bolted together on site and for some

reason, which I can understand what it is, the commendation of those

concrete slabs and gas, if there's an explosion in one flat, what must

happen is that the concrete slab breaks and it causes the whole thing

to collapse. It is saying that these tower blocks were meant to have been

reinforced, the Council for they had been reinforced, but it turns out

they have never been reinforced. These residents have been living in

these blocks which could come down like a pack of cards if there was a

gas explosion. And it might affect other tower blocks so it comes back

to the issue about the checks that are done on tower blocks and safety

and so on and the chain of command in this whole area. And the fact

that it takes a terrible tragedy like Grenfell Tower for people to be

checking about this kind of risk. Let's look at the FT. Tiny story

here. France urges fairer taxation of US tax. Martin, you spotted this,

what is it about? -- US technical companies. The French and the German

companies have put some proposals to the next European Council meeting in

Finland next month and they are complaining that the French economy

minister has said that as B, which is France's second -- which has

France as the biggest market has paid something like ?99 in France in

the past year and they are not paying any tax on the millions they

are making. It is familiar from Google and so on. These

multinational corporations which are operating across, making huge

amounts of money, and not paying tax in the countries they are based on.

This is a European attempt to find some way of ensuring that what our

fair taxes are paid by these companies. In the European Union,

there might be a fair chance of getting them to pay within the

European Union but it's probably requires an international effort and

not all countries will feel so inclined.

That is what politicians have been banging their heads against for a

long time. You have these international summits and there have

always been low tax jurisdictions and it has always been difficult for

the companies that want to do something about it to act

unilaterally but it seems like France is having a good go at it.

Let's finish with the Daily Telegraph. When you are drinking

that chilled diet drink and feeling virtuous because you gave up the

full sugar variety, we have got bad news. Diet drinks could make you put

on weight. What is the science behind this? Apparently, if you have

a diet drink, the body normally associate sweetness with lots of

calories and burn them off, or tried to burn some of them. And if the

diet drink doesn't ... With the diet drinks, it doesn't get the message,

there is a mismatch between the sweetness of the drinks and the

banning of calories, so it makes you fat and is pointless. Very alarming

for people who drink a lot of diet fizzy drinks. But I suppose there

are other reasons that you might drink the strings, for your teeth.

The bubbles are very good. Drink water. The reward circuits

don't register the right sort of makes between sweet and calories.

They don't taste so good anyway, so you might as well the full fat

version! That it fully papers for tonight.

You can see all the front pages on BBC's website. If you missed the

programme, any evening you can watch it later on the BBC iPlayer. Rowena

and Martin, lovely to see you both. Coming up next, the weather.