Thursday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Camilla Cavendish: How do we weigh the damage caused by 'emotional abuse' against the trauma of foster care?
• Peter Riddell: The most important event to affect Gordon Brown’s election decision is turbulence in financial markets
• Dean Godson: West Midlands Police has shown that its preferred associates in the Muslim community are Wahhabites and radical islamists
• Libby Purves: The impulse to throw Learco Chindamo out goes back into a basic morality far older than any EU law
• Bronwen Maddox: It is a desperate move for President Bush to invoke Vietnam as justification for staying longer in Iraq
• Valerie Grove: There is a touch of the Nimby in all of us, and the upside of misconceived planning is that it brings communities together
• Matthew Parris: I have no qualms at all about the hounding, marginalisation, stigmatisation and social exclusion of public snorers
• Robert Crampton: In snack bars, sandwich shops, anywhere the staff have some degree of discretion, Slavic women give you more food

And from the rest of the papers…

• Lynne Olson: (The Guardian) - Yes, George Bush does recall a British wartime prime minister: Chamberlain
• Tim Montgomerie: (The Guardian) - If Cameron's message of Tory renewal is to hold he needs commitment at the top of the party
• Seumas Milne: (The Guardian) - The western occupation of Afghanistan has brought neither peace nor development - and it fuels the terror threat
• Adrian Hamilton: (The Independent) - The retreat from Iraq: another saga of dishonest leadership and grisly lies
• Joan Smith: (The Independent) - Are devil girls really on the rampage?
• Janet Street-Porter: (The Independent) - The obscene wealth that's ruining London
• Boris Johnson: (The Daily Telegraph) - It's rubbish to claim that so-called 'Mickey Mouse' courses are devaluing the Great British Degree. The real scandal is the exorbitant cost
• Anne Applebaum: (The Daily Telegraph) - The Democrats should win the Presidential race without much ado but both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have particular problems
• Alan Cochrane: (The Daily Telegraph) - The opposition parties have shaken off their summer lethargy and have, quite rightly, decided to spoil Alex Salmond's celebrations of his first 100 days
• Max Hastings: (Daily Mail) - Why the West has nothing to fear from posturing Mr Putin

And from around the world…

• George F. Will: (Washington Post) - General Petraeus's metrics of success might ignite more arguments than they settle
• David Ignatius: (Washington Post) - Barack Obama is deftly managing to outflank his Democratic rivals on both the left and right on key foreign policy issues
• Andrea Camilleri: (New York Times) - Italy’s American baggage. The deaths of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the electric chair 80 years ago are destined to remain in our minds
• Michael Philips: (The Wall Street Journal) - An Israeli town where people talk with their hands - literally
• Jacques Diouf: (International Herald Tribune) - One livestock breed a month has become extinct over the past seven years — that means its genetic characteristics have been lost forever
• Georgy Bovt: (Moscow Times) - Russian newspapers almost never write about events in the Darfur province of Sudan, where bloody fighting between government forces and Muslim rebels has dragged on for years