Papers focus on drowning deaths

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A picture of two smiling girls is the image on many of Wednesday's front pages - but theirs is not a happy tale.

They are two young children whose parents drowned while trying to save them in Portugal.

"Orphaned by the Ocean" is the headline in the Sun. The Daily Mirror describes how their "happy half-term holiday turned to horror".

The Telegraph says the currents can be dangerous: "This is the wild Atlantic, not the lapping Mediterranean."

California fires

As wildfires continue to rage across California, dramatic images are emerging of the devastation they are leaving behind.

The Guardian explains how luxury hotels are "crammed to capacity" by celebrities forced out of their homes.

The Independent carries a photograph of a house razed to the ground, amid trees stripped of their leaves, with the simple headline "California Burning".

"Nature's blowtorch" is how the Daily Mail describes the wildfires.

A-levels

The government's plan to introduce diplomas in the place of A-levels are analysed in a number of the papers.

The Times' leader column worries that the proposal "risks condemning... schools to a chaotic struggle with overlapping curriculums".

The Sun employs the headline "A levels on Death Row".

The Independent says a government body has picked an unlikely squad of role models for Britain's schoolchildren - footballers wives and girlfriends.

Cash-for-honours

Many papers examine revelations from the man who led the inquiry into the cash-for-honours allegations when he appeared before MPs.

The Daily Mail says MPs were wrong to put Assistant Commissioner John Yates in the dock as "it wasn't his fault that witnesses refused to co-operate."

The Telegraph's sketch writer, Andrew Gimson, compares Mr Yates' task with the completion of a large jigsaw.

The Financial Times reports there could be delays in nuclear power plant plans.