Newspaper headlines: MPs condemn US president, and Johnson 'humiliated'

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UK Parliament/Roger Harris MPs intervene during the Afghanistan debateUK Parliament/Roger Harris
Some senior Tory backbenchers were among those offering strong opinions in Wednesday's debate

The Parliamentary debate on Afghanistan is the main story for most of the papers - with many focusing on the criticism aimed at Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

"Asleep at the wheel", is the headline in the Metro. For the Guardian, it's "Johnson humiliated".

The Guardian says the prime minister faced a wall of fury from all wings of the Conservative Party, with 11 former cabinet ministers among the dozens of MPs and peers expressing anger and frustration at the UK's failures in intelligence and preparation.

A number of papers also highlight anger at Joe Biden - with the Daily Telegraph headline: "Parliament holds the president in contempt". It describes the criticism as an unprecedented rebuke to a US president.

An unnamed cabinet minister tells the Times the US failure to realise that Afghanistan was on the brink of collapse shows that America is "looking inward and is unwilling to do even a modest amount to maintain global order".

The minister adds: "The US remains by far and away our most important ally, but we are not Washington's most important ally by some stretch."

The Daily Mail urges Dominic Raab to "seriously consider his position" after reporting that that he failed to make a phone call while he was on holiday to seek urgent help airlifting interpreters out of Afghanistan.

According to the paper's main story, senior officials in the Foreign Office advised last Friday that he should make immediate contact with the Afghan foreign minister - and not pass on the task to a junior minister.

The Foreign Office tells the paper that Mr Raab was engaged on a range of other calls and this one was delegated to another minister.

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For its lead, the Sun says the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have taken a "swipe" at the Queen in a new chapter of their autobiography.

It says they hit out at the statement she issued earlier this year following their interview with Oprah Winfrey, that "recollections may vary".

They had alleged that when Meghan was pregnant with their son, Archie, "concerns" had been raised by a member of the family about the colour of his skin.

According to the paper - and widely reported elsewhere - the couple believe "full ownership was not taken".

Geograph/Evelyn Simak  Lamarti's ice cream vanGeograph/Evelyn Simak
A complaint was made that a Lamarti's ice cream van, like the one pictured, had played its chimes for too long

Finally, the Telegraph reports there has been a "meltdown" in Lowestoft, after an ice cream van was banned from a residential street - for breaking the rules on chimes.

The paper says ice cream vans are allowed to play tunes only for up to 12 seconds - but these chimes twinkled for 20 seconds.

A meeting of East Suffolk Council's licensing sub-committee heard claims from a resident of Ashfield Crescent that the van's chimes rang "excessively" during April and June.

The owner of the van tells the paper that whoever complained about the chimes was "the Scrooge of summer" - and it wouldn't stop him from bringing a bit of summer to people in the rest of the town.

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