Newspaper headlines: 'Alarm' over school isolation booths and 'Mugxit' By BBC News

Staff Published duration 18 January

image copyright PA Media image caption Sajid Javid told the Financial Times there would be not be alignment on regulation with the EU after Brexit

The chancellor's interview with the Financial Times - in which he warns British businesses the UK will not stay closely aligned to EU rules - is picked up by Bloomberg.

It describes Sajid Javid as "firing an early salvo" in what's likely to be a "fractious year", as London and Brussels attempt to agree their future relationship.

The news agency also notes a report in the Daily Telegraph that Boris Johnson is planning to formally open trade talks with the US as soon as next month.

Bloomberg suggests that Britain is seeking to put early pressure on the EU's trade team, even before officially quitting the bloc at the end of the month.

The Guardian leads on a warning from the children's commissioner for England that more schools are converting toilets and classrooms into isolation booths for "disruptive" pupils.

Anne Longfield tells the paper she has heard "horror stories" of children sitting in silence for hours - an experience they described as "distressing and degrading".

She says she's also concerned that isolation is being used as a "gateway" to school exclusion.

The Department for Education is quoted as saying that use of isolation "must comply with pupil safeguarding" and that time spent there must be "as constructive as possible".

'All-star legal team'

President Trump's high profile legal team for his impeachment trial provokes plenty of comment in the US-based media.

The New York Times says, in appointing the former independent counsel Ken Starr, and the celebrity lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, the president has "assembled his view of an all-star television legal team".

Politico points out that Mr Trump's lawyers will also be speaking to a broader, and perhaps more important, audience - the American public.

image copyright AFP image caption Opening statements in Mr Trump's impeachment trial will begin next week

It says the president sees his defence, during the nationally televised Senate trial, as a critical part of his re-election campaign in November.

An angry exchange on the BBC's Question Time programme on Thursday is the basis for the Daily Mail's top story, which it headlines as "Meghan race storm".

The actor Laurence Fox was described as a "privileged white male" by an audience member after dismissing suggestions that Prince Harry's wife was hounded out of Britain by racism.

'Disgraceful'

The paper says the row "exploded" on social media after Mr Fox replied that putting that label on him was also racist.

The Times adds that Mr Fox was condemned by the actors' union Equity, which described his comments as "disgraceful playing to the gallery" and called him a "disgrace to our industry".

The Sun's editorial praises the actor for "having the guts to defy the suffocating liberal-left consensus in the arts".

And the Times has a picture of the best-selling author, Lee Child, on its front page alongside the news that he's to stop writing any more novels about his most famous character, Jack Reacher.

But that's not the end of the story. In what the paper thinks is a literary first, he is allowing his younger brother, Andrew Grant, the rights to continue the series, although he has to change his name to Andrew Child.