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In its leading editorials today, The Times tackled the Jon Venables case, urged Nigeria’s acting president to proceed with caution, and reflected on feminism and the Oscars in light of International Women’s Day.

Taking on a subject appearing on editorial pages across Britian today, The Times claimed that Justice Secretary Jack Straw is right to stand strong against the mob demanding that he reveal the circumstances around convicted child killer Jon Venables’s return to prison. However, The Times added, in the interest of a functioning justice system and transparency, as soon as charges are filed against VEnables, Straw must reveal their nature.

Under the headline “Good luck, Jonathan”, The Times contended that, like the banks, “Nigeria is too big to fail.” Acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan must focus on defusing the sectarian tensions within in his nation, after brutal violence over the weekend claimed the lives of 500 people, mostly women and children, and deal with the divisions in his own government. “The alternative,” the paper wrote, “is a slow drift into disaster.”

And what better, more fitting morning for Kathering Bigelow to wake up on after becoming the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director in the Academy’s than on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day? The Times feminist Oscar wrap-up concluded, in a slightly awkward and unintentionally weird bit of phrasing, “Maybe the British weren’t coming this year. But the women certainly were.”

The Telegraph also dealt with the Venables’s case, looked at public sector cuts, and made the shocking claim that vinyl is back.

The Telegraph backed down slightly from its earlier demand that Straw reveal as much as he could about the reasons why Venables was taken back to prison, saying now that Straw is right to resist the demands of the mob. However, the paper claimed that Straw’s mishandling of the case resulted in a kind of information “vacuum” leading to ever more damaging and hysteria-inducing rumours.

“The two-day strike by more than a quarter of a million civil servants is not only the most significant unrest in the public sector for two decades but may also be the shape of things to come,” The Telegraph opined, adding that public sector unions need to realize that the “years of plenty have gone.”

In possibly the shortest editorial in recent years, The Telegraph expressed a bit of happy shock at the recent rise in vinyl sales, asking whether it may also inspire a new generation of album covers.

The Guardian claimed that Sunday’s election in Iraq is significantly and positively different from the 2005 election and wrote that David Cameron needs to figure out “what side he’s on” in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The Guardian wrote today that this Sunday’s election in Iraq differed from the last in two major ways: One, America is steadily drawing down the number of US combat troops in the country, with the expectation to be out by August, and two, that the Sunnis, who boycotted the last election, voted in this one. This time around saw bombs and violence, but this time around, roughly 62 percent of Iraqi voters turned out. Said The Guardian, “There are grounds for qualified optimism but there is no certainty that those politics will become more important and more effective in allowing this fractured country to slog on towards the stability it deserves.”

And following the news that former President George Bush personally called on David Cameron to apply more pressure to the Conservatives local partner party, the Ulster Unionist Party, to support the devolution deal, The Guardian wrote that Cameron finds himself in an unenviable position. As the head of the party that started the Northern Ireland peace process while partnering with the party that wants to bring it down, Cameron, the paper wrote, needs to figure out what side he’s on.

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