Exam standards come under focus

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The waiting is over for thousands of A-level students as they discover how they have fared in this year's exams.

According to the Daily Telegraph they will discover that a quarter of the exams will be awarded a grade A.

The Telegraph says leading universities are becoming concerned that the number of top-level passes is making it almost impossible to spot the top students.

In the Independent, exams chief Mike Cresswell says comprehensives are falling behind in exam performance.

Drinking crackdown

The papers follow up a call by Cheshire Chief Constable Peter Fahy to clamp down on teenage drinkers.

The Daily Mirror has in its sights Home Office Minister Meg Hillier, who lays the blame firmly on celebrities.

Instead of backing Mr Fahy's "interesting idea" that the drinking age is raised, she bizarrely blames hard-drinking pop stars, it says.

The Times says increasing the price of alcohol to tackle the problem would rightly be resented by the majority.

Madeleine inquiry

The Daily Mail reports that the Portuguese police officer in charge of the Madeleine McCann inquiry believes she died on the night she vanished.

It says his team have gathered a record amount of evidence, including blood in the room where she was sleeping.

The Daily Express goes further, saying police are "sensationally" claiming they know the identity of her killers.

The paper goes on to say that the four-year-old died inside her family's holiday apartment in the Algarve.

Lottery joy

The Guardian pictures the UK's biggest ever lottery winner breaking open the bubbly on its front page.

The paper says that at £35.4m, EuroMillions winner Angela Kelly was endearingly overawed knowing that she is worth more than Wayne Rooney and princes William and Harry.

The Mirror's front page picture is slightly less clear - a colleague's fuzzy snap of the moment she called from work to claim her prize.

The Sun says she was so flustered she initially phoned the wrong number.