Should women be allowed to fight on the frontline? Is it time for complete equality in the armed forces? Is society ready for the idea of female soldiers routinely fighting and dying in combat?

The death of Sergeant Sarah Bryant, the first female British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, has reignited the long-running debate over women’s role in modern warfare.

The existing rules that exclude women from situations where the primary duty is “to close with and kill the enemy” are irrelevant in Afghanistan and Iraq where there is no single front line, according to some commentators.

Instead, British forces are engaged in a “360-degree war” where all soldiers, male or female, could be in the line of fire at any time, Catherine Philp wrote in the Times.

“In times gone by, rules like these kept women far behind the men,” she writes. “In the heat of the Iraq insurgency, however, all that began to change. In reality, the rules are already stretched to breaking point.”

The old arguments that women are not physically capable to fight or might disrupt “unit cohesiveness” no longer hold water, she added.

The Ministry of Defence says there are now about 18,000 women in the armed forces, just under 10 percent of the total. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) allows the armed forces to exclude women from some posts.

That’s the right approach, according to one contributor to an online military forum.

“I’ve yet to see a woman who could withstand the mental and physical pressure of infantry work,” he wrote.

Not so, said Jo Salter, the RAF’s first female fighter pilot. She said society’s attitudes have changed over the years and the sex of a soldier is no longer the issue it once was.

“It’s always so sad when there’s any death at all. Gender isn’t the issue,” she told the Daily Telegraph.

That view was echoed by the parents of Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, who died in Iraq in 2006.

“Sarah did not distinguish between herself and the boys she served with,” her father Terry told the Daily Mirror. His wife Sue added: “There were four others with her and their families’ grief is equal.”

A quick look at the front pages after Bryant’s death suggests newspaper editors may not see it that way.

Pictures of Sgt Bryant in her wedding dress were splashed across several front pages under headlines such as “Our Afghan Heroine”. Most ran long stories on inside pages about her life and career in the army. The deaths of male soldiers typically receive far less coverage. There were few details of the three male colleagues killed with her.

Whether the media coverage of Bryant’s death reflects the wider views of society is hard to tell.

The last word goes to an unnamed military source who told the Herald newspaper: “Every man - and woman - is born equal under the 7.62mm gun law”.

“He might not  have been the easiest of allies, but an ally he has been.”

That’s the verdict of the Daily Telegraph in an editorial to mark President George W. Bush’s farewell tour of Europe.

Despite concerns over issues such as Iraq,  the economy and extradition treaties, Bush was “never disloyal or ungrateful”, the paper said.

He acknowledged Britain’s unparalleled support after the Sept. 11 attacks, the newspaper noted. And Bush backed Britain over Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestine roadmap, the paper said.

“A country, like a man, can have friends who are difficult. But sticking to them is the essence of friendship,” the paper said.

The Independent wasn’t quite so gracious.

It featured a cartoon of Bush, caricatured as a duck with a leg in plaster and carrying a crutch, greeting Gordon Brown, portrayed with a large beak and tail feathers. The pair are standing next to the bony corpse of the dove of peace under the caption “Rendezvous”.

Bush says to Brown: “The Dodo of Downing Street - Yo!.” Brown replies: “The Lame Duck of the Lone Star State, I presume?”

The tabloid Daily Mirror went further.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” it said in an editorial.

“He has been one of the worst presidents in American history,” it said. “His shameful legacy can be summed up in one word: Iraq.”

Some commentators suggest the historic “special relationship” between London and Washington has changed for good since the departure of Tony Blair.

One media report said diplomats have stopped using the phrase, preferring instead the term “close bilateral relationship”.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has spoken of the need to “recalibrate” the relationship to make the two sides more equal.

With Bush leaving the White House soon, where do you see Anglo-U.S. relations heading?

As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.

Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.

“An attack on women? Utter nonsense. The campaign to cut the time-limit is an attack on an everyday practice that shames our nation,” it says.

Rubbish, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch.

There is no significant evidence to support the claim that the foetus is more viable at up to 24 weeks than in 1967 or 1990 when the law was last changed.

“If viability isn’t the test - as it was claimed to be back in 1990 when the limit was reduced from 28 weeks - then the judgment must be that some folk simply don’t like abortions and wish to restrict them as much as possible,” he writes.

There is little doubt that the “temperature of the debate about abortion” has changed in recent times, says the Independent.

“The introduction of 4-D ultrasound techniques, showing foetuses of just 12 weeks with apparent facial expressions, has dramatised the debate,” it says in an editorial. “So have couples coming back from hospital and proudly showing off photos of their baby at its 12-week scan.”

But there is an even more pressing matter than the upper time limit for abortions, according to a Daily Telegraph editorial.

It says that only a small number of terminations take place at more than 22 weeks. However, there are 200,000 abortions in Britain each year at 12 weeks or less.

“Governments routinely launch campaigns telling us not to drink, smoke, take drugs or eat to excess; yet there is no sense of a similar effort being expended on advising women about the medical and psychological trauma of abortion,” the paper says.

Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley says the debates over abortion and research on embryos highlight a wider divide between the two main political parties.

She argues that there is a real difference between a progressive, pro-science Labour government and a backward-looking, “finger-wagging” Conservative opposition.

“If the reactionary arguments are successful, throwing out vital medical advances and criminalising frightened, often young, women, then it will mark a real turning point,” she writes.

“Whatever you think of the New Labour years, it has been a decade of social liberalism, when racism, homophobia and anti-science voodoo became steadily less respectable.”

 THE GUARDIAN: Recession alert as Brown fights back

Gordon Brown’s drive to recapture the political agenda with a programme of new laws to create “an opportunity-rich Britain” was badly shaken yesterday by King’s warning.

“The nice decade is behind us,” Mervyn King declared in funereal tones, warning that the economy was “travelling along a bumpy road” as he predicted rising prices would put a squeeze on take-home pay for millions of workers.

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FINANCIAL TIMES: No rate cuts before 2010

Britons should not expect another cut in interest rates for at least two years, the Bank of England indicated yesterday as it warned that inflation would rise far above its previous forecasts and persist at levels well above the government’s target until early 2010.

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DAILY TELEGRAPH: Recession danger is real, says Bank governor

The British economy faces the real risk of falling into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has admitted.

Mervyn King warned families to brace themselves for a further “squeeze” on household finances as energy bills and food prices continue to rise.

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THE TIMES: The “nice decade” is over, says Bank chief

Britain faces two years of economic pain and could sink into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has said in a stark warning to the nation.

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THE INDEPENDENT: Meningitis: Defeated at last?

The annual scourge of deaths and severe illness caused by meningitis could be consigned to the history books after scientists announced startling results from trials of a potential vaccine.

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DAILY MAIL: Death of the ‘nice’ decade

The good times are gone and there is now a real risk of recession, the Bank of England warned yesterday.

Families face a five-pronged assault on their finances, the BoE’s Mervyn King said in his bleakest assessment yet of the state of the country.

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DAILY EXPRESS: New bin tax bombshell

Ministers are pushing ahead with plans for pay-as-you-throw bin taxes – just days after Gordon Brown signalled they would be axed.

Five pilot schemes are being rolled out across the country which could slap up to £1,000 a year on every family that fails to recycle enough.

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THE SUN: Crackers
Amy Winehouse will not be prosecuted for smoking crack.

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DAILY MIRROR: Help him

He’s just two days out of rehab - but as troubled Paul Gascoigne staggers along a road at 8am yesterday, it’s clear he is still urgently in need of help.

The ex-England star, 40, looked dazed as he tottered along in Gateshead with a towel flung over one shoulder.

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DAILY STAR: Cellar boy: My Story

Cellar monster Josef Fritzl’s freed dungeon kids have spelled out their simple dreams for a happy life.

Felix, 6, says all he really wants is a ride in a car - and to run across a meadow playing with other normal kids.

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From a haunted church in Abington, Cambridgeshire, to a spectral white bird spotted in the Devon village of Zeal Monachorum, England’s towns and villages are full of ghost stories.

 Authors Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson have written a county-by-county guide to the hundreds of tales that have been repeated down the years.

While some may scoff, the collection contains hundreds of accounts from people convinced they have seen headless horsemen, screaming skulls or supernatural packs of dogs.

Poltergeists, ghostly figures in country churchyards and strange auras in houses are recorded across the country.

Have you seen a ghost? Do you believe in the supernatural? Or do you think it’s all in the imagination?

 In an age of viruses, fraud and identity theft, who should be responsible for policing the Internet?

Governments, private security companies and law enforcement agencies all play a part in tackling cyber-crime.

But author and academic Jonathan Zittrain argues that we should be wary of “locking down” the Internet with increasing amounts of centralised rules and sealed gadgets that can’t be tinkered with.

In a new book published by Penguin and Yale University Press, he says part of the answer lies in greater freedom and trust, rather than more rules or technological solutions.

We don’t have police on every street corner in the real world, so why have that online, he asks?

People should be encouraged to see themselves as “netizens” — active participants in the online world, rather than passive consumers of Internet content.

They could share the load of policing the net, reporting threats and working together to combat the risks.

He says Wikipedia has shown that online collaboration can work.

“The challenge to the technologists is to build technologies to let people of good faith help without having to devote their lives to it,” he says.

Supporters say it’s just common sense, while at least one critic has described the approach as “utopian”. Who do you think should shoulder the burden of Internet security?