THE HEADLINES AT 0800 ON TUESDAY 27th MARCH

It's eight o'clock on Tuesday the 27th of March.

Tony Blair is launching a review of crime policy, which recommends tougher community sentences, special units for mentally ill prisoners, and a shake-up of the police.

A report on bullying in schools says some of them are excluding the victims rather than the bullies.

An Australian man who's spent five years at Guantanamo Bay has pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism - and will be sent home to serve his sentence.

CRIME
Tougher community sentences and new units for prisoners with mental illness are among the government's latest ideas for combating crime, to be published today. Tony Blair will also announce a greater emphasis on rehabilitating offenders, and a review of the police service in England and Wales. The proposals are all set out in a policy document on security, crime and justice. Our home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw, reports:

SHAW: Tony Blair's latest policy paper touches on a number of familiar themes: early intervention to prevent criminality; targeting the most prolific offenders and drug users; tougher community punishments. The review of policing will identify ways to cut red tape, make the police more accessible to the public, and give forces greater say over their budgets. Within police circles, however, there's puzzlement about why a shake-up is needed, at a time when the Home Office is conducting its own review of police powers, and forces are busy setting up neighbourhood policing teams. One of the more radical ideas in the policy document is for special units to house mentally-ill prisoners, where drug treatment would be available.

BULLYING
MPs on the Commons education select committee say some schools are excluding the victims of bullying to keep them from harm -- rather than excluding the bullies. They've urged the government to issue fresh guidance on bullying to schools in England -- and say pupils should have a say in the way bullies are punished. The committee chairman -- the Labour MP Barry Sheerman -- told us that headteachers should not shy away from taking action:

SHEERMAN: Some people make excuses -- it's too easy for heads and schools to say 'oh that bully, he's outside the school. It happens round the corner, it happens outside the school gate' and if you've got a culture in the school that says no bullying inside the school or outside the school -- anything that affects the students life in the school, whether its externally stimulated, is intolerable.

WOOLMER
The policeman leading the investigation into the murder of Bob Woolmer in Jamaica says there are as yet no suspects in the case. Officers are examining the Pakistan coach's laptop computer, and will carry out DNA tests on all guests at the hotel where he died. From Kingston, here's Andy Gallacher:

GALLACHER: Rumours and speculation have surrounded this case from the start and as the days go on things aren't getting any better. At the latest news conference here in Kingston, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mark Shields, said that the stories appearing both here and in the UK are distressing to Bob Woolmer's family.

SHEILDS ACT: The British Press are totally wrong on this occasion, with all due respect, they should wait for announcements from us, because I think we know if there are any suspects. There are many potential suspects in this investigation and even more potential witnesses and we're nowhere near the stage at the moment to start naming names in terms of suspects.

GALLACHER: The Deputy Commissioner also said that his officers may now travel to other parts of the Caribbean to talk to officials and players. The Jamaican police are also still looking at security camera footage from the Pegasus Hotel where Bob Woolmer was killed more than a week ago.

IRAN
The family of the only woman among a group of British service personnel being held captive by Iran have issued a statement saying they are going through a "very distressing time". Faye Turney, who's twenty-six, is one of fifteen sailors and marines being detained and interrogated in Tehran. The British government has said it's doing "everything possible" to secure their release.

HICKS
An Australian man who's spent the past five years in detention at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay has pleaded guilty to charges of supporting terrorism. David Hicks, who's a Muslim convert, was accused of training at an al-Qaeda camp before volunteering to fight alongside the Taleban. He'll serve his sentence in Australia. Nick Bryant reports from Sydney:

BRYANT: After refusing to enter a plea during his first appearance before the military commission, David Hicks and his legal team changed strategy just hours later, seemingly in the hope of receiving a lighter sentence. His US military defence lawyer had long argued that the thirty-one year old could never receive a fair trial at Guantanamo Bay and that depression and despair might lead him to seek a plea bargain. So, in a hastily arranged second hearing, he answered 'yes, Sir' when asked if he was admitting his guilt. The detainee, dubbed the Australian Taleban, will be sentenced later in the week and then return home to serve his sentence. His cause has been taken up by thousands of his fellow countrymen who have complained that the former kangaroo skinner has been subject to a kangaroo court.

JOHNSTON
There have been more calls for the release of the BBC correspondent, Alan Johnston, who is missing - presumed kidnapped - in Gaza. An international journalists' organisation based in Paris has joined BBC staff and Palestinian journalists who have made appeals on his behalf.

MINISTERIAL CODE
The Conservative leadership is being urged to accept a new ministerial code of conduct -- to make a future Tory government more accountable and transparent. The party's Democracy Task Force -- headed by the former chancellor Kenneth Clarke -- will tell the Conservative leader David Cameron that he should agree to a binding code of conduct. Mr Clarke told this programme that Tony Blair's style of government had lost the trust of voters.

CLARKE: We're having a proper Cabinet again, we're having a proper roles for Secretaries of State and getting rid of the present situation where one person,really, has taken most power into his own hands which he exercises an informal sofa government style using a huge of number of political advisors and his entourage around him in Number 10. His only rival has been Number 11, where a rather smaller and more disciplined group imposed the power of the Treasury, using their power over the money, as far as they can and other ministers as well.

ULSTER
Emergency legislation will be rushed through parliament today, which should allow Northern Ireland to be governed, once again, from Stormont. Now that Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists have agreed to work together in a power-sharing administration, all the main parties at Westminster have promised to back a Bill to prevent the Assembly being dissolved.

CHILD KILLER
An official investigation into the case of a convicted child killer and sex offender who befriended children after his release from prison has concluded that the public were put at risk because he wasn't properly monitored. The BBC programme, Panorama, filmed Frank Parker's behaviour while he was living at a hostel where he was supposed to be under supervision. The chief inspector of probation, Andrew Bridges, said Parker should not have been freed, and he should have been sent back to prison earlier:

BRIDGES ACT: We saw an example of a particularly difficult kind of offender for a hostel to manage and we found that he had been poorly managed over a long period of time. His release put the public in a position of avoidable risk, and he should have been recalled earlier than he was.

BABIES
Researchers say the number of British babies born underweight is on the rise, and is among the worst in the European Union. The left of centre policy group, the Fabian Society, says the number of children born weighing less than five and a half pounds is a "scar on the national conscience". More details from our health correspondent, Adam Brimelow:

BRIMELOW: Every year in Britain more than fifty thousand babies are born at a low birth weight -- less than five and a half pounds. That's getting on for eight per cent of the total, and it's going up. The Fabian Society says this is a moral outrage. Low birthweight babies, it says, have an increased chance of disabilities, brain damage, behavioural problems and chronic illnesses like diabetes and lung disease. It says one of the main reason Britain compares so badly with other European countries is the high teenage pregnancy rate. It says younger mothers -- many from deprived backgrounds -- are more likely to have a low birthweight baby. It calls on the government to make this a national health priority, with better access to antenatal care for women most at risk, and one-to-one nursing for babies in intensive care. The government will issue its formal response tomorrow at a Downing Street seminar hosted by the treasury minister Ed Balls -- who's chair of the Fabian Society, and a long-time confidant of the chancellor.

BURMA
Burma's military rulers have been showing off their new capital for the first time to the outside world. Nay Pyi Taw, or the Abode of Kings, is about three-hundred miles north of the former capital, Rangoon. Our correspondent, Jonathan Head, was among the foreign journalists invited to the new city to watch the Armed Forces Day Parade:

HEAD: The rutted and overcrowded roads of Burma suddenly give way to smooth eight-lane motorways as you approach the new capital. Naypyitaw is being built on a vast and extravagant scale in hundreds of square kilometres of tropical scrubland. All government employees were forced to uproot from Rangoon and move here a year-and-a-half ago. New pastel coloured apartment blocks are being developed for them. There is reliable electricity and water. But they complain that the city lacks shops and restaurants. Many have refused to bring their families. The military has built itself a fortress-like complex to the east. This is where Burma's reclusive leader, General Tan Shwe, now lives. Secure in its remote new capital, the military still shows no signs of loosening its grip on Burma.

SLAVERY
A national service of commemoration is being held this afternoon at Westminster Abbey, to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade. It'll be attended by the Queen, senior politicians and religious leaders. During the service, there will be a minute's silence, broken by the sound of elephant tusk horns - which were used in West Africa to warn of impending raids by slave traders.