Telegraph goes undercover and excels

The Sunday Telegraph can be applauded this morning for its investigation into child trafficking.It is not often that the voice of the establishment crusades against hunanitarian issues but its front page splash today by undercover reporter David Harrison reveals

An undercover reporter was offered several children for sale by their parents in Nigeria: two boys aged three and five for £5,000, or £2,500 for one, and a 10-month-old baby for £2,000. Teenage girls - including some still pregnant - were willing to sell their babies for less than £1,000.
One international trafficker, tracked down in Lagos, claimed to be buying up to 500 children a year.
Impoverished African parents are being lured by the traffickers' promises of "a better life" for their children, thousands of miles away in cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester.
But, once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent means to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits, totalling tens of thousands of pounds each a year.

Check out the Telegraph Tv piece which you can also access on the same page

John Simpson in a beard to get into Zimbabwe

Great bit of journalism in the Independent this morning.

John Simpson managed to defy the BBC's ban on reporting in Zimbabwe( the report of which the Beeb used to trump the return of News at Ten last night more of that later)

Read the report in full here but this describes the lengths that he went to circumvent the ban

Back in London a make-up artist fitted me out with a beard, to make me look like an Afrikaans farmer. But it had a habit of coming loose in the heat and, if we were caught, it seemed unwise to wear a disguise. So I've just worn a baseball cap to cover my untidy white hair. I look pretty awful, but not as bad as I looked in the beard.
The disguise has worked pretty well. We have been in Harare for a week, and have spent a lot of time driving and walking round the city, the suburbs and the slums. Recording what is known in the trade as a "piece to camera" , walking down a main street in Harare apparently talking to myself, was the tensest moment. I had to do it a couple of times, regardless of the onlookers and the police stooges.