‘Stop delays,’ says Zelensky, and ‘a tear for Sven’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for the West to “stop delays and let us fire missiles into Russia” leads Saturday’s Daily Mail. His comments come amid “fears of a wider conflict”, the paper says, with tensions “on a knife-edge”.
Zelensky “questioned Britain and America’s commitment to his country”, according to the front page of the Times. His comments came before Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer met US President Joe Biden in Washington, where they discussed the conflict. Biden, the paper says, is “understood to be more reluctant than Starmer” about allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western weapons.
Back in the UK there is a “surge” in private healthcare, according to the i, as a “record number of people turn away from NHS”. The paper says record numbers of patients have decided to go private, after “losing patience with longer NHS waiting lists”.
Dame Esther Rantzen’s renewed call for MPs to debate and vote on assisted dying leads the Daily Express. Dame Esther, who has stage four cancer, has urged the prime minister to “come true” on his promise, as “for me, and others like me, it has to happen soon”, the paper writes.
A picture of TV presenter Jay Blades features on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. The Repair Show host has been charged with controlling and coercive behaviour. Elsewhere, the paper promises to tell the “secrets of how five Tory PMs were felled”, with extracts from the autobiography of the former chairman of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady.
One political career that looks set to continue, however, is that of Larry the Cat. According to Saturday’s Daily Star, a Labour MP “risks [their] career” after calling “Britain’s most famous cat”, a long-serving Downing Street resident, an expletive. The paper says it is “out of order! Order!”
The Daily Mirror headlines with “a tear for Sven”, after the former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s funeral took place in the Swedish town of Torsby on Friday. Among the mourners was an “emotional” David Beckham, who the paper says paid a “tearful farewell” to his former boss.
Investors are sharply increasing their bets on the US Federal Reserve cutting the interest rate by 0.5%, according to the Financial Times – with signs of a “cooling economy”. The paper also reports on a “balancing act” in China, as the country raises its retirement age, and the price of coffee beans hitting a “record high”, leaving “Italians in a froth”.