Newspaper headlines: 'Perseverance pays off' and 'foreign holiday hope'
Many of Friday's papers report the success of Nasa's Perseverance as it lands on Mars - and new data showing the early impact of vaccines in the UK.
By BBC NewsStaff Just one jab of either the Oxford of Pfizer vaccines can cut Covid infections by two thirds is the main story for the Daily Telegraph. It says the new early research by Public Health England shows a similar reduction in infection across all age groups. The paper describes it as "the vaccine data that paves the way back to freedom". Government advisers will recommend the next phase of the vaccine rollout continues on the basis of age, rather than prioritising key workers, according to the lead story in the Daily Mail. But it says the age brackets will be widened and those between 40 and 49 years old could be invited for a jab within a matter of weeks. The paper says such rapid progress on the vaccine front is likely to increase pressure on ministers to ease the lockdown that much sooner. President Macron of France says Europe and the US should urgently allocate up to 5% of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said African nations were buying western vaccines at "astronomical prices" - two or three times that paid in the west. "Get One in One's Arm" is the headline in the the Sun, highlighting the involvement of Prince Charles in a campaign to encourage everyone to receive the vaccination. Nasa jubilation Grainy images of the bumpy surface of Mars taken by the Perseverance rover soon after landing loom large on the front pages of the Telegraph and the Times. According to the Telegraph, Nasa controllers watched helplessly as Perseverance autonomously conducted its own approach to the Red Planet. It says there was jubilation as the spacecraft sent back a "heartbeat tone" confirming its safe arrival. The i paper leads with an opinion poll which suggests the public remains cautious about the scale of how quickly we lift the lockdown. It says a majority of those questioned supported the reopening of schools on 8 March and of non-essential shops by April. But most remained hesitant about pubs and restaurants opening their doors within the next two months. The main story for the Guardian is Facebook's stand-off with the Australian government over whether it should pay for news content. The paper says the social media site is coming under fire from politicians, news providers and civil society groups around the world who want to see its powers brought under control. Sign up for a morning briefing direct to your inbox And finally, the discovery of a small figurine dating from the first century has led archaeologists to believe that mullet haircuts were all the rage in the Iron Age. A number of papers report that the bronze statuette, which was unearthed in a car park in Cambridgeshire, depicts a man with hair cropped at the sides but longer on top and at the back - similar to hairstyles all too popular in the 1980. The Telegraph tells us it is not clear how widespread the Iron Age mullet was, but was probably subject to "regional styles and variations".