Newspaper headlines: PM 'takes fight to EU' while Corbyn pleads with MPs By BBC News

Staff Published duration 18 August 2019

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"Boris Savages The Saboteurs" is the headline in the Mail on Sunday, which says that Boris Johnson has accused the former chancellor, Philip Hammond, of "gravely damaging" the national interest by attempting to block a no-deal Brexit.

In a leaked letter, the prime minister tells Mr Hammond it is as "plain as a pikestaff" that efforts to prevent a no deal are making it harder to secure a new agreement with the EU.

But the Brexit Party MEP, Annunziata Rees-Mogg, does not think Mr Johnson's meetings with European leaders this week will change much.

"I do not expect the EU to behave in a rational manner", she tells the Sunday Express - "I anticipate it attempting to drown the goose that lays the golden eggs".

He says his plan to oust Mr Johnson and replace him as head of a caretaker government is "the simplest and most democratic way" to avoid it, despite opposition from the Liberal Democrats and rebel Conservatives.

The paper agrees - declaring in its editorial that Mr Corbyn is "unequivocally right" on this issue - while urging other opponents of a no-deal Brexit to keep his offer alive.

The faces of dozens of babies and children killed by violent parents appear on the front of the Sunday Mirror, which is campaigning for a change in the law.

It says that in each of the 63 cases it uncovered, officials knew the children were at risk but could do anything about it, as they were "forced to honour the parents' human rights".

The paper recommends automatically banning anyone convicted of violent crimes, child abuse or sexual offences from having unsupervised contact with their child - unless a judge decides otherwise.

The Sunday Times reports that thousands of tickets are still being sold for flights on Boeing planes that remain grounded following two accidents in which 346 people died.

It says a number of airlines, including American, Norwegian and TUI, have scheduled more than 32,000 departures on the 737 Max jets later this year.

One British tourist says he felt like "a guinea pig" when he found out he would be travelling to the Caribbean on one of the planes, despite being given assurances to the contrary when he booked the flight. He then asked for a refund but was refused one.

The surgeon who performed the UK's first successful heart transplant 40 years ago tells the Sunday Telegraph that pig hearts' adapted for human use could be available within three years