Friday's papers

Here one day gone the next as the Guardian leads with the news that Tony Blair's bid to beocme EU president has faltered badly as Sarkozy and Merkel fail to back him.

The continent's centre-right leaders made it clear one of their own must have the post

says the paper

Hours after Gordon Brown delivered his strongest statement of support for Blair – disclosing that he had spoken to him earlier this week – British sources indicated that the former prime minister was unlikely to assume the high-profile job.

According to the Independent,Gordon Brown got into a heated exchange with German politician,Martin Schultz, the leader of the Socialist group in the European Parliament. over his predecessor's chances of becoming EU President

According to the Times

Thousands of polling stations would be closed and voting hours reduced under a plan to cut the cost of elections.

adding that

The options, outlined in a working paper drawn up by the Ministry of Justice for the Treasury, are designed to save up to £65 million. They were condemned last night as a “threat to democracy that would save peanuts”.

More "democracy" in the Telegraph as the paper reports that Tony McNulty has been allowed to keep almost £60,000 he claimed in expenses for a house where his elderly parents lived just eight miles from the "main" home he shares with his wife.

The former Home Office minister was criticised by a formal inquiry for allowing his parents to live rent free at taxpayers' expense and ordered to repay more than £13,000.
But the Parliamentary committee, who decide MPs' punishments ruled he should be allowed to keep the majority of the money claimed on the home.

The Independent leads with the news that Michael Ashcroft, is caught in the middle of a legal and political storm in the Central American haven of Belize, where many of his businesses are based.

In an interview with the paper

the country's Prime Minister, Dean Barrow, has accused the billionaire Tory party deputy chairman of operating a monopoly and of trying to obscure his interests through a byzantine web of subsidiaries and trusts.

The Times reports that

Pakistani troops fighting Islamist militants in the mountains of South Waziristan have picked up the trail of a leading al-Qaeda figure wanted in connection with the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that

The chances of another disastrous round of voting in Afghanistan's presidential race increased dramatically today after the country's election authority defied international pressure to cut the number of polling centres in order to reduce fraud.

Two 10-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of raping an eight-year-old girl in her local park. reports the Telegraph

The alleged victim, who cannot be named, returned from playing near her home in Hayes, west London, on Tuesday afternoon to tell her mother that she had been raped by two boys she knew.

The couple kidnapped by Somali pirates relived the moment when they were captured

In a brief phone call, permitted by his captors, Paul Chandlerhe told how he and wife Rachel were on the Indian Ocean in pitch darkness when gunmen hijacked their craft.
'Three boats came alongside,' he said. 'I was asleep and men with guns came aboard.'

says the Mail

It leads with the news that Nursery paedophile Vanessa George has

After months of refusing to name the children she abused, now given police a list of up to ten names of children under three.

The case of Premiership footballer Marlon King makes most of the papers.He was yesterday jailed for 18 months after he had says the Sun

denied punching a 20-year-old student after she complained he had touched her bottom at the nightspot in London's West End.Premier League Wigan immediately fired him, with chairman Dave Whelan declaring: "He is absolutely sacked."

Finally

He was 85 and frail but Norman Painting insisted on travelling to the studio to record his lines. Two days later the actor, who had played Phil Archer since the pilot episode of The Archers radio series 60 years ago, died.

reports the Times

Painting, who had fought ill health in recent years, was found at his cottage in the Oxfordshire village of Warmington by his carer yesterday morning. Ambridge addicts have followed Phil’s progress from lusty young romantic to grandfather and Archers patriarch.