What Tuesday's papers are saying

Varied front pages this morning.

The Guardian leads with the story that the first sea Lord,Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope is to launch a forceful defence of the Royal Navy in a bid to protect it from swingeing spending cuts.

Meanwhil in the Telegraph Gen Sir David Richards tells the paper that the country must be "ruthless" in cutting hi-tech defence spending in favour of more troops or risk failing on operations.

One will seem to be the major political story makes the front of the Times which reports that Pub and club promotions that encourage binge drinking will be banned within months in a government retreat from its policy of liberalising licensing laws.

The booze battleground says the Mail describinmg how a 'levy' on late-opening pubs and a ban on supermarket discount deals will be unveiled by the Tories today to take back town centres from violent drunks.

For the Independent a series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than £26bn for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of pounds over budget or have been cancelled altogether.

As it says in its leader,

The words "IT" are commonly associated with modernity, progress and efficiency. And this is no doubt why ministers and civil servants so readily and unquestioningly commissioned such lavish projects. Yet what they have evidently been buying all these years is not any of these things but good old-fashioned snake oil.

Haiti is starting to move down the agenda but features heavily in most of the papers.According to the Telegraph,France accused the US of "occupying" Haiti on Monday as thousands of American troops flooded into the country to take charge of aid efforts and security.

The Times says that Six days after disaster struck, the operation to rescue Haiti descended into blame and finger-pointing yesterday as only a trickle of food, water and medical assistance reached hundreds of thousands of victims.

The Guardian reports on Kabul's day of terror.

The daily business of government was already in full swing by the time a man wearing a white shalwar kameez walked towards the front gate of Afghanistan's central bank.

as the Independent describes how a group of Taliban militants equipped with suicide vests and automatic weapons attacked major buildings in the city centre, including the presidential palace, in one of their most ambitious assaults.

Meanwhile at the Chilcott inquiry,Tony Blair's case for going to war in Iraq was dealt a body blow when Jonathan Powell, his closest advisor, admitted "we were wrong". says the Telegraph

The Guardian says that Tony Blair will face pressure at the Iraq inquiry a week on Friday to explain how he was able to claim that Saddam Hussein was building a "growing" programme of weapons of mass destruction six months before the invasion in 2003.

Looming industrial action at BA is the lead in the Mail.

Around one million passengers could see their travel plans ruined if the union organises a 12-day strike during the school holidays in April

.says the paper

Both the Sun and the Mirror lead with the taxi driver who won £26m in the Euro lottery.Wad the builder says the Sun which says that 53-year-old Colin Sturt said he planned a "big knees-up" with brother Gary, 51, sister Teresa, 44, and their dad George, 76, who get £6.5million each.