From today's UK papers

Daily Telegraph

Prescriptions for sedative drugs have almost doubled in one year, a report by the Department of Health discloses today.

A giant storm has wrapped the whole of Mars in a blanket of dust and sent the temperature of the planet's atmosphere soaring.

The Japanese medaka, a fish revered for its variety and beauty, has provided University of Tokyo scientists with insights into how to tan without the sun, and even treat skin cancer.

Financial Times

A sweeping review of private sector involvement in public services is being planned by the parliamentary public administration committee.

A serious skills shortage is developing in a broad "western crescent" stretching to the south, west and North of London, according to research published today by the Institute for Employment Research at Warwick University.

The government is on a collision course with the country's top employers over plans to give trade union "learning reps" statutory rights on the shopfloor.

New private-public partnerships in genome research are expected to emerge from a meeting in Washington tomorrow of international pharmaceuticals company leaders, and the heads of the US National Institutes of Health and Britain's Wellcome Trust.

The European Union is moving faster than expected towards its goal of an employment rate of 70 per cent by 2010.

Independent

The rise in violent crime is being driven by a growing number of assaults and fights between friends, work colleagues and their clients, and schoolchildren, a Home Office study shows.

Record number of young professional women are being declared bankrupt after running up debts of as much as £100,000 on designer clothes, exotic holidays and expensive social lives.

The new professional body for teachers is facing a financial crisis after fewer than one in eight staff signed up to pay its £23 subscription fee, according to the largest teaching union.

Guardian

A rare Egyptian servant figure parted from a queen who died 3,000 years ago has been unearthed in a store room at Harrogate Museum.

Managers of the nuclear industry's waste disposal agency have admitted suppressing scientific information and misrepresenting research findings.

Miscellany

Teenagers whose parents are still married to each other are far less likely to have underage sex, according to a report from the Family Matters Institute, which will reignite political debate over whether government should do more to encourage family values. ( Daily Mail, Guardian )