The car crash involving British ex-world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in Nigeria makes several front pages. The Sun says the boxer was “inches from death” and “cried in pain as he was pulled from the wreckage” of the “horror crash”.
“Nigeria nightmare” is the Daily Star’s headline, which says Joshua was “miraculously pulled alive from a horror car crash”.
The Daily Mirror also leads with Joshua’s crash, reporting he is in a stable condition in hospital. The paper also features the King’s New Year Honours list on its front page, writing that actor Idris Elba will receive a knighthood. “Arise, Sir Idris”, it proclaims.
England’s Lionesses “have dominated” the New Years Honours, the i Paper reports. “Pride of England” is the paper’s headline, listing some of the soccer stars to receive knighthoods, including the Lioness manager Sarina Wiegman, captain Leah Williamson, and teammates Alex Greenwood, Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone.
Downing Street is facing a “furious backlash” over democracy activist Alaa Abd El Fattah being “welcomed” back to the UK, the Daily Mail writes. The paper says the welcome occurred “despite fury over [the] Egyptian dissident’s anti-Semitic and anti-British tweets”. The recently released Egyptian-British national arrived in the UK on 26 December before some of his old social media posts and messages resurfaced in which he called for Zionists to be killed. Mr Abd El Fattah has apologised, saying he understood “how shocking and hurtful” the posts were.
The Daily Express also leads with the backlash against No 10 over Mr Abd El Fattah’s case, writing Sir Keir Starmer “refuses to deport Egyptian ‘extremist'”. The government has announced a review into “serious information failures” relating to the activist’s case.
The Daily Telegraph leads by alleging Mr Abd El Fattah’s engaged with a post on Facebook claiming he is the “victim of a ‘Zionist campaign'”. The paper says the account appeared to like a post that was re-sharing a separate post featuring those claims.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband plans to set out a proposal of “£13bn over the next four years to reduce carbon emissions from Britain’s 30 million homes”, according to the Times. Labour ministers hope “grants to install solar panels, heat pumps and battery storage” will help lead to “zero bill” homes “paying little or no money for power”, the paper says.
“US stocks eclipsed by rest of world’ reads the headline on the Financial Times, reporting on “a rare year of underperformance for Wall Street”. The paper identifies multiple reasons for investor “unease” in the US, including “worries about high valuations, a Chinese artificial intelligence breakthrough and Donald Trump’s radical economic policies”.
“Polls reveals rise in ethno-nationalist approach to identity” reads the Guardian’s top story, reporting the number of people who associate “Britishness” with birthplace has nearly doubled in two years. “About one in three people (36%) thought a person must be born in Britain to be truly British”, according to the paper, citing a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The Independent leads with its own survey findings that “more than half of British voters want [a] new military alliance without America to counter threat from [Vladimir] Putin”. It says 55% of those polled want the UK to enter a new “Europe defence alliance”, while only 11% opposed it.
