The Observer headlines on Iran’s threat of “vengeance” over the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader. It says Hassan Nasrallah inspired fervent adulation – as well as bitter enmity from his foes – and will be hard to replace.
The front page of the Sunday Times shows a picture of a man surveying the wreckage of at least six residential buildings at the site of an Israeli attack in Beirut. The paper reports that 50,000 people have now fled Lebanon for Syria. It adds that Nasrallah’s death is a transformative moment for Hezbollah.
An expert on the group tells the Sunday Telegraph the strike that killed Nasrallah – coupled with the recent wave of pager and walkie-talkie explosions – means that the fighters now running Hezbollah are “young and inexperienced”, potentially preventing it from being able to escalate the conflict with Israel. But analysis in the Sunday Mirror says that, although bruised, the group is still a powerful opponent.
Elsewhere, The Observer has seen analysis which suggests the chancellor’s cut to the winter fuel allowance in England and Wales may save significantly less money than had been hoped. The cut was expected to remove the payment from around 10m pensioners, but not those on pension credit.
However, research from Policy in Practice – an organisation which alerts older people to their eligibility for financial help – says tens of thousands have now made claims for pension support in England and Wales, which opens up a series of other benefits since the announcement.
The Sun on Sunday claims the government is considering cigarette-style health warnings on junk food packaging, as part of a drive to reduce childhood obesity.
It calls the idea a “nanny-state crackdown” following a measure which bans fast food adverts from being broadcast before 21:00 BST, and restricts under-16s from buying highly-caffeinated drinks.
According to the Sunday Mirror, 1,000 civil servants were assigned to work on the previous government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda. The paper says that was 20 times more than the number working to reduce violence against women and girls.
The Sunday People reports that US investigators have flown to London to begin looking into whether the rapper, P Diddy, committed offences in the UK.
And finally, the Mail on Sunday, features an extract from Boris Johnson’s memoirs, where the former prime minister writes that he believes Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab, and not a market in Wuhan. He adds that some scientists were “clearly splicing bits of the virus together like the witches in Macbeth.”
Elsewhere, Mr Johnson writes that he is no longer convinced the Covid-19 lockdowns were successful in reducing the number of fatalities during the pandemic.
The Sunday Times says scientists are working on a process to reintroduce the dodo, which was driven to extinction in 1662, just 24 years after being discovered by humans. It says they plan to edit the genome of a Nicobar pigeon – the dodo’s closest living relative species – and blend it with the genome of the extinct bird, which has been sourced from museum specimens.
This article was originally published at www.bbc.com
