What the papers say

Journalist Liz Kennedy takes a look at what is making the headlines in Friday's morning papers.

Swine flu and the figure 65,000 is everywhere... that's the number of people who could die from the virus this year in the UK, according to health officials.

The Daily Mail and the Daily Express calculate that figure at 350 a day. But that is, as the Times is careful to stress, "a worst case scenario".

The Irish News has a figure of a possible 1,800 deaths in Northern Ireland.

Its health correspondent has obtained statistics from the Department of Health here.

The department's acting on the assumption that more than half a million people here may contract the virus in its first major wave.

Other papers concentrate on the recent rise in actual cases, with the Daily Telegraph and the News Letter highlighting that 29 people in the UK have now died, 26 in England and three in Scotland.

Award postponed

The Sun is one of a number of papers to reveal that Cherie Blair, wife of former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is apparently amongst those laid low with the virus.

The Belfast Telegraph also carries that story, with the news that the QC had been due to pick up an honorary degree in Liverpool on Friday. That award's now been postponed till next year.

The funeral of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe is on many front pages.

"A tear for a hero" says the Daily Mirror beside a picture of his grieving widow.

Sally Thorneloe is also on the front of the Guardian. "With straight backs and stiff salutes, they said farewell."

The service took place on Thursday at the Guards' Chapel in London. The Daily Express says the most senior army officer to be killed since the Falklands was a "Helmand Hero".

Colonel Thorneloe died when a roadside bomb exploded in Afghanistan just over fortnight ago and his funeral was, according to the Daily Mail, "a study in real dignity."

'Struggle for superlatives'

The Guardian says there was a "struggle for superlatives" to express the calibre of the man whom his family and colleagues had lost.

Trooper Hammond, who also died, will be buried on Friday.

It's the 'Snip' that's in the news in the south. There's a special 16-page 'Snip Special' in the Irish Independent which has a front page headline, "the 5billion Euro snip", alongside a monstrous purple Venus flytrap plant, about to be pruned.

It calls it the Public Services Costs' plant and the paper's editorial calls the proposed economies "a blueprint for survival" for the economy in the Republic.

The Irish Times details the main proposals in its lead. There are to be 850m euros savings in social welfare rates, 104m euros saved by the "rationalisation" of tourism, arts and sports programmes, down to 25million euros saved by the amalgamation of smaller primary schools.

Miriam Lord's column says there will be no "sniptoeing through the tulips" now for the Taoiseach. She also reveals that the family silver may be disappearing, with Wolfe Tone's bust and a grandfather clock bizarrely gone from Leinster House. Ms Lord says it "looks like the bailiffs have been in."

And finally, there's the story of an alien abduction in west Sussex.

The Daily Telegraph has the story of a spoof kidnapping at one English junior school.

The War of the Worlds-type exercise had the help of Sussex police, as teachers staged a spaceship crash and the kidnapping of a teacher.

But spacecraft, police sirens and flashing blue lights gave seven year-olds a bit of a fright. It was all to stimulate a creative writing exercise, but parents are the ones who are now putting pen to paper.