From today's UK papers

FINANCIAL TIMES

Unwanted Christmas gifts are economically inefficient. John Kay examines US academic Joel Waldford's super-rational view of Christmas.

THE GUARDIAN

Thirty-six Scottish pupils may bring a test case under the Human Rights Act over the summer exam results fiasco that saw incomplete or inaccurate results issued to thousands of teenagers.

Robin Saxby, chief executive of microchip designer ARM Holdings, will take the stage at Liverpool University today to attempt to persuade the audience of undergraduates that engineering can be a "sexy" career.

THE INDEPENDENT

You do not win wars just by killing people, Oxford historian Niall Ferguson argues in a lecture delivered on the Boxmind internet site.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

The way chimpanzees and orang-utans use plants for medication is providing insights that could help their human cousins.

THE TIMES

This year's National Training Awards highlight how training can bring positive change.

MISCELLANY

Doctors are fabricating research results to win grants and advance their careers and the medical establishment is failing to protect the public from the menace of these scientific frauds, a committee of medical editors said yesterday ( Guardian , Independent ).

New strategies will be needed to tackle crime in the internet age, according to the Department of Trade and Industry's Foresight panel on crime prevention. Property crime will fall but violent attacks on individuals will increase, and the middle classes will retreat into walled estates ( Guardian , Times ).

The most popular diet of the British male is based on beer, pies and white bread, a team at University College London has found. His female counterpart subsists on cornflakes, white bread and milk. Neither cares much for apples or cabbage ( Independent , Daily Telegraph ).