FRONT PAGE OF THE DAY
Beijing Morning Post (beijing chenbao) does it again. The headline is:

FIRST SHIPMENT OF DUTY FREE HONG KONG GOODS HIT THE SHELVES

The goods are duty free because of the CEPA agreement, which means selected goods and companies from Hong Kong get special tax light treatment on the Mainland. The photo shows a group of happy businessmen enjoying the fun free trade agreement.

In the bottom right corner is a photo and teaser headline for an article about Macedonian president Boris Trajkovski, who died yesterday in a plane crash.

The story at the bottom with the tabloid style corpse photographs is about an explosion in a cafe in Moscow. Next to it is a short article about housing prices - apparently there won't be any great fluctuation.

Another story concerns new regulations to clamp down on bad taxi drivers in Beijing. If the Beijing government can teach all the city's taxi drivers to er, drive, pigs may indeed fly in the Year of the Monkey.

WORST FRONT PAGE OF THE DAY
Ladies and Gentlemen, Shanghai's Xinmin Wanbao does it again. The headline:

THE GROWING PAINS OF "A FAMILY"

The article is about woman who lost her job at a state-owned enterprise, started a company offering care services to old people and hired 14 laid-off workers to do it. They are looking after 40 old people now, but can hardly pay salaries. Shanghai's Bund is photogenic, but the photograph on this page makes it look dreary.

HONORABLE MENTION
Party organ The People's Daily gets honorable mention, not for being particularly good, but for being absolutely true to itself.

The headline above the fold is classic People's Daily poetry:

BUILD A THOUGHT-WAREHOUSE OF TRANSFORMED MILITARY AFFAIRS WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

The image shows Jiang Zemin speaking to a group of officers from the Military Academy of Science (junshi keyuan).

Below the fold is a photograph and story about Wen Jianbao meeting Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Beijing.

Other articles include set pieces about peasants and the release of various statistics. There are liberal sprinklings of the word 'development'.