Newspaper review: Papers react to Ohio abduction saga

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Papers

The saga of the three abducted women in Ohio reads, according to an expert in criminal behaviour writing in the Daily Mail, "like a gruesome tale from crime fiction".

In a front page photo in the Independent, the house where the women were held looms like an image from a Hitchcock film.

Chains were found hanging from the ceiling of the basement, says the Daily Express, and the paper thinks the women were "shackled in a dungeon".

Harrowing tale

The Times describes the neighbourhood as "latino, working-class", and says the residents now feel ashamed that they had not noticed anything was wrong.

The Guardian is not the only paper to ask "how could three girls grow up imprisoned and undetected in a residential street just minutes from the centre of one of America's most bustling and populated cities?"

Another commentator, in the Daily Telegraph, talks of the captives having been "imprisoned in plain view".

Prince regent

The decision by the Queen not to attend the Commonwealth meeting in Sri Lanka is seen by the Daily Mirror as one taken "to cut back on long-haul trips because of her age".

The Daily Mail says "what we are witnessing is significant shift in the delicate balance of monarchical responsibility between an aged Queen and a long-time heir".

The paper wonders whether the Prince of Wales is not emerging as, in effect, a "Prince Regent".

But the Times points out that a regent is appointed "if a monarch is incapacitated" - and remembers the not all together example of the Regency when George III was suffering from mental illness in the second decade of the 19th Century.

All about Nigel

After the problems for Mr Cameron posed by Messrs Farage and Evans, the paper comments that Lord Lawson - showing he retains his "sense of theatre" - has "poured petrol on the flames already licking through the Conservative mansion".

A cartoon in the Sun shows Mr Farage and Lord Lawson paddling Britain further away from Europe - and Mr Cameron trying to perform a delicate balancing act of his own as he keeps one foot in each camp.

Big announcement

Questions are also being asked about another long reign - that of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

The Daily Telegraph talks of his future being "shrouded in doubt" - saying he is understood to be considering whether to bring his 26 years in charge to an end.

The Daily Express thinks the club's players were told during a day playing golf that a big announcement would be made on Sunday.

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