Papers turn on 'smear' adviser

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The phrase "those who live by the sword, die by the sword" has never before seemed quite so apt.

<a class="inlineText" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169545/Downfall-Mr-McPoison-How-Gordon-Browns-king-dirty-tricks-sent-spinning-No10.html"> "Downfall of Mr McPoison" </a> , runs the headline in the Daily Mail.

Like almost all papers, it heaps odium upon Damian McBride - Gordon Brown's ex-adviser who resigned after plotting a smear campaign against senior Tories.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the offensiveness of Mr McBride's e-mails reveals a <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/5145190/The-Damian-McBride-scandal-is-smutty-slanderous-and-very-much-in-character.html"> "growing sense of desperation" </a> in Downing Street.

Mob rule

Anti-government riots which have caused mayhem on the streets of Thailand's capital Bankok receive widespread coverage in the papers.

The <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/latest/2009/04/13/warning-to-britons-over-thai-unrest-115875-21275022/"> Daily Mirror </a> says Britons who had been planning to travel to Bangkok have been advised to stay away.

According to the Guardian, the country is at risk of slipping into what some observers describe as a <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/12/thailand-state-emergency-bangkok"> "mobocracy" </a> .

The paper says that Thailand's escalating political crisis follows the country's military coup in 2006.

Under the weather

"You Win Some, You Lose Some", declares the <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/5145520/Easter-weather-divides-Britain.html"> Daily Telegraph </a> above two photos taken on Easter Sunday.

One shows happy day-trippers basking beneath the bank holiday sun in Devon, enjoying the warm spring weather.

In the other, however, a family clad in anoraks cowers on a sea wall in Suffolk under an ominously dark sky.

In the words of the Daily Express, the sharp variation in weather conditions across the country meant that Britain truly was <a class="bodl" href="http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/94826/The-great-seaside-divide ID="> "a nation divided" </a> .

Animal crackers

The Times tells the <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6082682.ece"> tale of a family of water voles </a> , relocated from a sewage farm in south London at vast expense.

An operation to capture the 27 creatures, which are protected, took ecologists a total of six weeks and cost £400,000, according to the paper.

But the Sun carries a photo of an animal which can expect to live in even more opulent surroundings.

Its headline above a story about Bo, the US first family's new pet dog, reads: <a class="inlineText" href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2374040.ece"> "Bark Obama". </a>