Newspaper headlines: Freddie Starr 'found dead' in Spanish home By BBC News

Staff Published duration 10 May 2019

image caption Freddie Starr was a popular entertainer in the 1970s and 1980s

The Mirror, the Sun and the Star report that the comedian, Freddie Starr, has been found dead at his apartment in Spain, at the age of 76.

The Sun describes him as its favourite pet-eating comedian - after its infamous story in the mid-1980s claiming he had placed a hamster between two slices of bread at a friend's house and eaten it.

The story - later denied by the entertainer - inspired what the paper calls its most famous headline, "Freddie Starr ate my hamster". Today, it has the headline: "Freddie Starr joins his hamster".

The Times leads with a claim by doctors that ministers are ignoring medical advice and doing the "minimum possible" on air pollution.

It reports that the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health believe the government has focused on a "series of distractions" such as wood-burning stoves to avoid the real problem of traffic fumes.

But the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, tells the paper he is "very worried" about the scale of illness caused by pollution and wants to reduce the harm from it to "as low as possible".

According to the Telegraph 's lead story, victims of crime may soon no longer have to pay to call the police after the Home Office announced it would review the charge for calls to 101.

It says the move came after the paper revealed growing outrage that victims are having to pay the 15p flat rate charge to report non-emergency offences.

The review could result in taxpayers footing the cost of running the service, or may require telecoms firms to pay for it, the paper adds.

Jamaica deportations

For its lead story, the Guardian says at least five people deported to Jamaica from the UK have been murdered since March last year.

It says they were sent back despite strict rules prohibiting deportations to places where an individual's life may be in danger.

The paper has also heard claims from other returnees that they are living in fear for their lives. It says Jamaica has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world.

Heart attack 'breakthrough'

The i has news of what it calls a "Holy Grail" breakthrough that has raised hopes of an effective treatment for heart attack patients within a decade, which would save thousands of lives a year.

According to the paper, researchers at King's College London have developed a new technique that shows huge promise in regenerating the crucial cardiac muscle cells that are destroyed during a heart attack.

The procedure has been successfully performed on pig hearts, it says.

image copyright Chris Attridge/PA Wire image caption Labour lost more than 80 seats in last week's council elections in England

A number of websites report that analysis for the Labour Party carried out by the pollsters, Survation, has rejected suggestions of a significant Brexit backlash in last week's council elections in England.

According to the Spectator , a comparison of the results with those from the 2016 referendum in local authority areas found that although Labour did a little worse in places that voted Leave than voted Remain, Brexit was not of huge importance to a person's likelihood to vote Labour.