It's the first detailed and broad-ranging assessment of the government's response to coronavirus. And a cross-party group of MPs says the failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic, despite evidence from China and Italy of its severity, was one of the UK's worst ever public health failures. A policy of trying to achieve herd immunity by infection - recommended by scientific advisers and not challenged enough by ministers - led to a delay in locking down that cost lives, say the MPs on the Health and Social Care and the Science and Technology Committees. Meanwhile, the rapid release of people from hospital into care homes without adequate testing or isolation, along with untested staff introducing infection, led to many thousands of avoidable deaths.

The UK was one of the first countries to develop a Covid test, in January 2020, but failed to create an effective test-and-trace system during the first year of the pandemic. Even then, it was too centralised, only later making use of expertise in council public health teams, the report says. Meanwhile, it highlights "unacceptably high" death rates in ethnic minority groups and among people with learning disabilities and autism. However, the committee chairmen, Conservative MPs Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, acknowledge it would have been "impossible to get everything right". And they highlight "big achievements" including the vaccination programme, describing the process - from research and development through to rollout - as "one of the most effective initiatives in UK history".

The MPs also praise the creation of a task force, combining the NHS, scientists and the private sector, the expansion of hospital intensive care capacity and world-leading development of treatments, such as dexamethasone. Labour's Jonathan Ashworth nonetheless says the findings are "damning", revealing "monumental errors". A government spokesperson says lessons will be learned, which is why a public inquiry will happen in spring, adding: "We have never shied away from taking quick and decisive action to save lives and protect our NHS, including introducing restrictions and lockdowns."

With soaring energy costs causing some manufacturers to warn of rising prices for goods and others to say they may have to shut factories, there have been calls for government intervention to protect tens of thousands of jobs. It prompted Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to go to the Treasury with a proposal for loans worth hundreds of millions of pounds as part of a package to help energy-intensive industries. Companies have called for a swift response. And the BBC understands the Department for Business expects to get Prime Minister Boris Johnson's backing. The Treasury is said to be still analysing the proposal, while No 10 has declined to comment.

It's not just sports fans who love statistics, it seems. Thousands of pieces of data are collected about even lower-league footballers for use in analysing performance or as a basis to calculate betting odds. And 850 players are threatening legal action against the data-collection industry. They want compensation over the sale of this information - without consent, they say - on the basis it contravenes General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules referring to physical attributes, location data or physiological information. "If you were a teacher or a lawyer and this sort of detail was being passed around your field of work, it wouldn't sit right," says ex-Wales international Dave Edwards. The players also want an annual fee from the companies for any future use of data.

Front pages focus on the MPs' report into the government's handling of the Covid pandemic.  The Financial Times says they accuse the government and scientists of a "group think" in the pandemic's early days, in backing a strategy amounting to pursuing herd immunity. Combined with British exceptionalism and a deliberately "slow and gradualist" approach, it meant the UK fared "significantly worse" than other countries, says the Guardian, quoting the report. Delays and "astonishing" mistakes killed "many thousands", according to the i's coverage. The Daily Mirror says "20,000 lives could have been saved" had ministers locked down a week earlier. The Daily Mail focuses on claims the elderly were an "afterthought" and that "many thousands of care-home residents died needlessly".

William Shatner - aka Star Trek's Capt Kirk - had his real-life voyage across the final frontier delayed until Wednesday by high winds. And he's been explaining why, despite his TV experience of travelling at "warp speed", he doesn't think the plan to boldly go aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard craft will be a "piece of cake". Here's what he said. Meanwhile, there's been something of a stellar find in the loft of a Northamptonshire manor house. There are hopes a drawing by 18th Century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - regarded as one of the Old Masters - could fetch £250,000 at a sale of the hall's contents, having lain unnoticed for decades. 

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