The shooting in Liverpool continues to dominate the papers although the deaths of three British troops in Afghanistan under friendly fire gets much of the headlines

Three British troops killed by US jet says the Guardian

An urgent investigation was under way last night into why a US fighter plane killed three British soldiers, and seriously injured two others, after it was called in to support UK troops engaged in a fierce battle with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.
In the worst "friendly fire" incident involving British forces in the country, an American F-15 long-range strike aircraft dropped a single 500lb bomb killing the soldiers from 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment.

Outcry as 'friendly fire' kills three UK soldiers reports the Telegraph

The Ministry of Defence has faced heavy criticism for failing to provide troops with technology that could help prevent "friendly fire" incidents after three soldiers died when an American jet dropped a bomb on them. Ministers had been warned by MPs this year that they had repeatedly failed to invest in a combat identification system to protect British forces from accidental attacks by allies.

A DEADLY BLUNDER? A DEADLY GAMBLE? says the Mirror

The men of B Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment, were fighting off a heavy attack from several Taliban positions - some only 200 metres away - near the small British base at Kajaki in the southern Helmand province on Thursday evening.
They radioed an urgent request for air support and two F15 jets were sent in. One dropped the single laser-guided bomb and it hit the British troops.
The survivors were evacuated to a field hospital at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand. Spokesman Lt Col Charlie Mayo said: "One is seriously injured and the other very seriously injured."


Sun offers £100k to catch killer as the paper takes the lead in the invetigations

THE Sun today offers a £100,000 reward to catch the BMX boy who murdered Rhys Jones.
Police have hit a wall of silence in their hunt for the 11-year-old soccer fan’s killer.
The reward has the backing of police and Rhys’s parents Stephen, 44, and Melanie, 41.
We put up the huge sum as cops quizzed a 16-year-old boy over the murder of Rhys, who was shot dead on Wednesday night in a pub car park near his home in Croxteth, Liverpool.

An arrest - but still police meet silence says the Times

Simmering tension threatened to erupt into violence in Liverpool last night as police confronted bitterness and anger among residents in the community that was home to Rhys Jones.
The 11-year-old schoolboy’s murder has exposed a widening divide between Merseyside Police and those who live in the Croxteth Park area of the city.
Local people complained that the force had failed to address concerns about gang-related crime. Police responded by expressing their frustration at the lack of information emerging from the community, which was hampering their efforts to track down Rhys’s killer.

Mother's tearful return to the spot where Rhys was gunned down is the lead in the Mail

The pain was obvious on their faces as for five minutes they walked among the flowers and Everton football shirts at the spot which has become a makeshift shrine in the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth, Liverpool, where Rhys was shot by a young killer on a BMX bicycle on Wednesday evening.
They took with them their own flowers and messages of love.

Meanwhile the Independent asks

The real question: why are our children prepared to kill one another? on its front page

The harrowing and sad death of Rhys Jones brought home this week the unseen and sinister infrastructure for young people to use firearms that now exists in Britain's cities. The rage, bewilderment and hatred that have followed Rhys's murder while he walked home from playing football are understandable. Questions are being asked about whether we have a state of anarchy on our streets, whether a generation is being lost to violent lyrics, images that glorify murder and poor parenting. The eight children on the front page, all of them aged under 18, are unified by one single fact: they all had their lives cut short this year by their fellow teenagers.

The Guardian meanwhile reports as

The Nogzy, the Crocky and the bizzies - a teen 'soldier' speaks

I'm a Nogadog, me. I've been one for four years and I'm 17 now. I thought it was a good thing when I was young. It was all my mates. You are just a Nogzy soldier. We are all Nogzy soldiers.
It's not a nice thing to be into, fighting and shooting and that. But that's it. It can be with fists or with knives, whatever someone prefers. Or guns. I haven't used a gun, though I have shot one off in the park once. If I was in danger and lads were after me then I would use one - there are two Crocky lads after me now. If you are fighting and you have something on you, then you are just going to use it.

David Cameron vows to mend 'broken society' reports the Telegraph

After a two-week holiday squeezed into a difficult political summer, he is back on front-line duty - answering questions about the killing of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool.
As well as shock and sympathy, the Tory leader says he felt deep admiration for Rhys's parents when he heard their moving appeal for help to find their son's killer, and for society to mend its ways.


Cam tells parents: Do your job reports the Sun

Fuelled by dismay at the shooting murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, the Tory leader said that it was time for ministers to look deeper into the issue rather than just call for further crackdowns.
Speaking on a visit to Oxfordshire, he called on the music and computer games industry and magazines to relent in their portrayal of violence

The Guardian reports on another incident

'Tragedy beyond words' for family as woman, 20, dies after park attack

A 20-year-old woman who was severely beaten during an alleged mob attack died from her injuries yesterday.
Sophie Lancaster was walking through the skating area of Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, with her boyfriend Robert Maltby, 21, when they were attacked by a gang of youths in the early hours of August 11. The couple, whose injuries were so bad that police were initially unable to determine their sexes, were taken to Rochdale Infirmary.

And more in the Mail which reports that

British Bank Holiday getaway descends into chaos with motorway shooting

The Bank Holiday getaway descended into chaos for thousands of travellers today after a gunman fired shots at a police car on a major motorway route.
Motorists were stuck in tailbacks on the M5 for most of the day, with further misery caused by an overturned lorry on the popular stretch to Devon and Cornwall.
Ten mile queues built up on several adjoining roads as frustrated holidaymakers attempted to find alternative routes.

Adds the paper

The chaos began at 4.10am when police stopped to check a blue 3-series BMW parked in a layby outside a garden centre near junction 12 of the M5.
But the L-reg car, which was carrying at least two people, sped away suddenly and two shots were fired from it in the direction of the police car.
Neither of the shots hit the car but the motorway was shut in both directions for several hours so forensic officers could examine the scene for clues, such as bullet casings. The BMW made a successful getaway.


Summer's here at last (... well, almost)says the Telegraph

In the West temperatures rose with Exeter hitting 77F (25C), and it was a similar story in the Midlands and Yorkshire.It was good news for deckchair and ice-cream vendors in coastal resorts such as Bournemouth as beaches which had been deserted for much of the summer filled up at long last.
The picture was rather less encouraging towards London and the South East.
Festival-goers at Reading may not have been rained on, but with water from recent downpours still not having drained, the best word to describe the conditions underfoot was "squelchy".

Much coverage of the Edinborough Tv festival

Paxman takes aim at BBC and 24-hour news culture says the Guardian

Jeremy Paxman last night attacked the 24-hour television news culture, which he says prizes emotion over reasoned argument and live reportage over uncovering stories.
He also used the flagship opening night speech at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival to attack the BBC, claiming its future could be in jeopardy because of the quality of its programmes.
"In the very crowded world in which television lives, it won't do to whisper, natter, cogitate or muse," he told the audience of TV executives. "You have to shout. The need is for constant sensation. The consequence is that reporting now prizes emotion over much else.

BBC’s licence fee could soon be indefensible, says Paxman reports the Times

The presenter of Newsnight gave warning that the BBC’s licence fee funding would become a thing of the past unless it was able to articulate “a clear sense of purpose and express it through much better protection of the defining brands”.
Speaking before an audience at the Edinburgh Television Festival, he predicted that there would probably be “one more licence fee settlement” but said that it would be “foolish to be too confident” that there would be a fourth or fifth to follow. He also high-lighted worries about a decline of standards in television, including the phone-in scandals on Blue Peter, Comic Relief and Children in Need.

The Mail meanwhile asks

Has Channel Four sounded the death knell for reality TV

Celebrity Big Brother is to be scrapped following accusations of racist bullying during the last series.
Channel 4 will turn its back on the reality show - and four other successful programmes - as it aims to concentrate on new, high-quality material.
However, industry insiders believe the decision not to run the celebrity show in 2008 may herald the beginning of the end for Big Brother.

The Independent reports that

Prime Minister and top footballers 'are overpaid'

A survey of what makes a "reasonable" wage shows the gulf between most people's idea of a fair day's pay for a day's work and what is actually taken home.
Premiership football stars are worth only £62,000 a year, a tenth of their average earnings, while the chief executives of top companies should command annual salaries of no more than £120,000 - a world away from the FTSE 100 average of more than £750,000, according to the poll for the Fabian Society, the Labour think-tank.The YouGov survey of 3,000 people found that best-selling authors should only receive £80,000 a year, while a reasonable pay packet for Prime Minister Gordon Brown was £135,000, more than £50,000 less than his actual salary of £187,000.


Democrats demonised for backing Bush in Iraq reports the Telegraph

Two of the Democratic party’s most influential strategists have been transformed into hate figures of the American Left after daring to support President George W. Bush’s tactics in Iraq.
Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, military analysts at Washington’s liberal Brookings Institution, declared themselves as unlikely allies of Mr Bush when they wrote an article in the New York Times titled “A War We Might Just Win".

The Independent reports that

Merkel under pressure to ban neo-Nazi party

Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under mounting pressure to ban Germany's main neo-Nazi party following a brutal attack on eight Indian traders who were chased and beaten by a mob screaming racist abuse.
A leader of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was charged with inciting racial hatred yesterday after he proposed Adolf Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hours after Udo Voigt made the remarks in a speech in Jena marking the 20th anniversary of Hess's death last Saturday night, the Indian men were chased through the nearby town of Mügeln.

Last of the Romanov children to be reunited in death with the Tsar reports the Times

archaeologists are convinced that they have found the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, Tsar Nicholas II’s haemophiliac son and heir, and one of his four sisters, the Grand Duchess Maria. The discovery near the Urals city of Ekaterinburg, where the family was killed by firing squad, may settle an enduring controversy over the fate of the Romanov dynasty after the Communists seized power in 1917.
More than 40 bone fragments, seven teeth, three bullets and part of a dress have been sent to forensic science experts for examination. They were uncovered after archaeologists identified the burial site from a 1934 report to local communist bosses by Yakov Yurovsky, the lead executioner.

The Guardian meanwhile reports on a modern Russia

The Maks-2007 international airshow near Moscow was the biggest in Russia's post-Soviet history - and an apparent symbol of Russia's resurgent military might. Last week, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia's ageing fleet of strategic bombers had resumed "combat missions". On Tuesday, the MoD said the RAF had sent out two Typhoon fighters after spotting a Tupolev-95 bomber heading towards British airspace.
The encounter seemed to symbolise Russia's renewed military threat and follows a tumultuous eight months in which a hawkish Mr Putin has denounced US power, torn up a conventional arms agreement with Nato, grabbed a symbolic chunk of the Arctic, and accused Britain of "stupidity" in its handling of the Alexander Litvinenko murder.

Finally the Independent reports as

Americans celebrate a national symbol as the Big Mac turns 40

It's up there with the dollar bill and the Statue of Liberty as one of the great symbols of American culture, so it seems only fitting that the Big Mac's 40th birthday be marked in style this week, with the opening of its own museum.
Fans of the world-famous burger can now immerse themselves in its history and play Big Mac games at the museum in Pennsylvania, which calls itself "the most tasteful in the world".
The triple-decker sandwich - with its two beef patties, sauce, lettuce, a sesame seed bun, and a distinctive middle layer of bread - was an instant success when it was invented by a McDonald's franchise owner, Jim Delligatti, in 1967.