“Justice is done but our hearts are broken,” reads the headline on the front page of the Metro on Friday. The paper is quoting the family of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, after her killer was convicted of her murder “in a row over a friend’s teddy bear”. Hassan Sentamu, 18, “clutched a stress ball as the verdict was delivered”, it adds, “then wiped away tears and refused to sit down as he gripped the dock”.
Elianne’s parents have said they “are crippled with pain” following her death, but promised that “her legacy will live on”, the Daily Mirror writes. It adds that they have “vowed to honour her memory by fighting knife crime”.
The Middle East is “on tenterhooks”, the Financial Times says, as a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas “nears [the] finish line”. Featured is an image of Palestinians jostling for food aid in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, as “the world waits for Israel to approve” the agreement. The paper leads on BP cutting “more than 5% of its workforce”, as its “under-fire boss” fights to save costs and “revive a share price that has lagged behind rivals”.
The Guardian warns that there will be no Israeli vote on a ceasefire deal “until Hamas agrees to all terms”. The paper says the delay “prompts fears [that] last-minute disputes or hardliners could scupper” the ceasefire before it is due to come into effect on Sunday. Friday’s edition also pays tribute to “the great American surrealist” director David Lynch, who has died at the age of 78.
The government have been “blasted over ‘toothless’ grooming probes”, according to Friday’s Daily Mail. It says Labour “faced fury” for announcing “five local reviews” into grooming gangs, rather than the full national inquiry some have been calling for. That announcement itself, the paper adds, saw the government “[backtrack] after previously insisting that no new investigations were needed”.
“Why aren’t you wanting to find out the real truth?” is how one grooming gang victim responded to the news, in an interview with the Daily Express. Fiona Goddard is one of those demanding a “full national inquiry”, and says Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s announcement of a nationwide review on Thursday is “just not good enough”.
Sticking with politics, and the i leads with a warning from military figures that the UK’s army is “now ‘too small’ to play a major peacekeeping role in Ukraine”, as the prime minister makes his first visit to the country since taking office. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has “[confirmed] he is in talks” with a number of countries over plans to enforce any future ceasefire in the country’s war with Russia, the paper writes. But, it adds, “the UK no longer has the depth” to do so.
First-time home buyers “will find it easier to get on the housing ladder”, according to the Times. Financial regulators are considering “looser loan rules”, the paper writes, as part of a “reform of the mortgage market”. Also featured on the front page is a picture of Donald Trump’s official portrait, ahead of his inauguration as president next week. The paper says it shares “something of the defiance” with Trump’s mugshot taken when he was charged with trying to overturn the election in the US state of Georgia.
The Sun is calling for convicted killer Jake Fahri to be returned to jail with the headline: “Lock him up again”. Fahri was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen, and was released on licence in 2023. The paper says he “faces a return to jail after apparently breaching his licence”. An investigation by the paper published yesterday claims he recorded rap music referencing the murder.
And Friday’s Daily Star says the band Village People hope their iconic song, the YMCA, “will save the world”. The song has become an unlikely anthem for US President-elect Donald Trump, and the band hope their performance at his inauguration “will help heal the world”.