What the papers say

Journalist Malachi O'Doherty takes a look at what's making the headlines in Friday's morning papers.

The breast cancer alarm for users of HRT is the biggest story in print on Friday and it runs across the tabloids and the broadsheets.

On Thursday, the government notified all doctors of the new findings but stopped short of telling them to take women off the treatment.

The Mirror has Michael McKevitt "Caged until 2016", and Omagh bomb victim relatives saying he should never be released.

The Irish News reports on its front page that the Halifax call centre has had to relocate a thousand staff after a lightning bolt on Tuesday night put it out of action.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan interviewed in the Irish News, says he wants to see pro-Agreement parties work collectively to clear the deadlock.

The Northern Bank is in trouble for failing to implement procedures for preventing money laundering. The News Letter has the story of a £1.25m fine imposed on the bank by the Financial Services Authority.

Inflation

The rate of inflation is falling in the Republic but the Irish Times lead suggests it's too early to celebrate and that the figures are masked by lower mortgage repayments and aggressive summer sales. Underneath it all, prices are still rising sharply.

As is the prospect of a scorching August. A side column story says the heatwave could take us into September.

If you want to escape the heat, says the paper, go to Malin Head where the temperature yesterday was a mere 16 degrees.

You can tell it's a light news week when the Mail gives most of a page to a picture off the email circuit and challenges readers to find a hidden face among coffee beans.

Pass Notes in the Guardian on Friday deals with God.

And the Guardian cartoon on the Baghdad Bomb makes up for the scant attention paid to it on most front pages on Friday. Only the Financial Times leads with it.

The Guardian cartoon depicts the wreckage under a headline: Weapon of mass destruction found in Iraq, after it had gone off.

Light relief in the Daily Telegraph which has a half page photo feature on the making of the film Calendar Girls about the Women's Institute ladies who posed nude for a calendar two years ago.

Helen Mirren is pictured wrestling with a cider press. Julie Walters as Miss February plays the piano.