Election fever,referendum fever and Maddy fever for the papers this morning.

MPs urge Gordon Brown to call snap election headlines the Telegraph

Labour MPs in key marginal seats are urging Gordon Brown to call a snap election, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.As the momentum for an autumn poll swept the start of the Labour conference, those MPs who had most to fear from a contest said that they were ready for an election in either late October or the first week of November.

Snap poll: MPs give support amid clamour reports the Guardian


the Guardian contacted more than 30 Labour MPs in marginal constituencies yesterday and found support for an early poll from those in the Pennines, Oxford, the West Midlands, the south-west, Edinburgh and the south coast.
Mr Brown has been polling in marginals and has a clear and sustained lead. Nigel Griffiths, who represents Edinburgh South with a majority of just 405, said: "He should go for it. If we have the election now, my majority will go up from 400 to 3,000. It is a gamble, but he should take it."



Election fever rages as Gordon Brown’s lead grows says the Times

Gordon Brown will set out his vision of another decade of Labour government today and leave the door wide open to an autumn general election.

With election fever gripping the Labour Party at its Bournemouth conference, Mr Brown and his closest supporters have been deliberately keeping the prospect of an early poll hanging over this week’s gathering and next week’s Conservative conference. Labour MPs in marginal seats are said to be telling the whips that Mr Brown should capitalise on his strong standing and go for broke.

Brown puts Britain on election alert headlines the Mail

Gordon Brown stoked feverish speculation about an autumn election yesterday by rushing out a draft manifesto mapping out his plans for another decade of Labour rule.
He repeatedly refused to rule out a snap poll as his allies talked up the chances of a "battle to the death" with the Tories.
The Prime Minister will decide within days whether to call the first autumn election in more than 30 years, with November 1 emerging as the favourite date.

The Independent though dampens the speculation

Brown to delay poll decision as he sets out stall for fourth term

Gordon Brown is keeping open the option of a snap general election but a new "poll of polls" for The Independent suggests that Labour's majority could be cut sharply if he goes ahead.
When he addresses the Labour conference today for the first time as leader, Mr Brown will set out the long-term agenda on which he will base his attempt to win a fourth term for his party. He will launch a drive to show voters he is more than just an experienced leader who is competent in a crisis, saying he has the policies to meet the challenges of the decade ahead.


The Sun's front page wants another poll

NEVER HAVE SO FEW DECIDED FOR SO MANY says the paper calling it the biggest threat since World war two

BRITAIN’S destiny is at stake today.
Gordon Brown is about to sign an EU Constitution that would change for ever the way we are governed.
Brown promised us a referendum in his campaign to become PM. Now he’s giving two fingers to Britain.
In 1940 Winston Churchill said of the Battle Of Britain: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Today The Sun launches a battle to win a referendum on the Constitution.

WE'LL FIND HER OURSELVES is the headline in the Mirror

Kate and Gerry McCann have hired teams of ex-SAS and MI5 experts to launch their own hunt for Madeleine.
They brought in the crack detectives after Portuguese police failed to follow up leads. Investigators from security firm Control Risks Group are in Portugal and Morocco. One specialist team is in Marrakech probing a double sighting of Madeleine that was dismissed by police.
The McCanns say officers have stopped searching for her because they only care about convicting them.

'MCCANNS ARE LYING' reports the Express

Portuguese police believe Gerry and Kate McCann are using friends to hide their role in killing Madeleine.
The Daily Express can reveal that their seven holiday friends may now be named as suspects as police believe they are hiding the truth about Madeleine’s death.
The dramatic move comes as it was reported that former chief suspect Robert Murat is to be told he will not face charges over the four-year-old’s disappearance. Ruling him out of the four-month investigation will leave Kate and Gerry McCann as the sole suspects. Last night police sources said the decision could have a devastating impact on the McCanns’ defence.

The latest crisiss in the farming industry is reported in most of the papers

Fresh crisis for farmers as new virus strikes says the Guardian

British farming, still reeling from the latest outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, was facing another crisis yesterday after a potentially devastating virus was discovered in a cow in the UK for the first time.
The first case of bluetongue disease was confirmed in a Highland cow on Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm, near Ipswich, on Saturday.
The animal, named Debbie, had been tested for foot and mouth last week before being diagnosed with bluetongue. It was culled yesterday and its carcass removed from the farm.

Bluetongue blew into UK 'up to 10 days ago' says the Telegraph

Officials warned that "ideal" weather conditions could spread the disease across the nation in days.While the beleaguered farming industry braced itself for yet another crisis in its worst year since the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, scientists said Britain's first confirmed case of the disease was unlikely to be an isolated outbreak.

On a different outbreak the Mirror reports on the

MEGABUG

A new drug resistant superbug sweeping Britain is killing more people than MRSA.
Esbl E.coli is contracted by eating infected chicken.
And a recent government study found A QUARTER of supermarket birds carried the bug.
Scientists believe it is being brought here in chickens imported from outside the EU, especially South America and Thailand.
It is infecting an estimated 30,000 people a year, says the Health Protection Agency.

Whilst the same paper highlights the case of

Ivy survived a plane crash, a heart bypass, TB and cancer.. only to die from a superbug after a 'routine' op

mother-of-four Ivy couldn't beat the deadly Clostridium Difficile bug, which she caught after simple surgery on a trapped nerve.
Yesterday Ivy's family criticised the standard of hygiene at the hospital in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Father arrested after four-year-old son stabbed to death reports the Mail.

A father was being questioned last night over the murder of his four-year-old son and stabbing of his teenage daughter.
The boy, Ryan Hawkins, was found stabbed to death in his father's house after his 14-year-old sister Donna called round to take him back to their mother's home.
The teenager managed to stagger out into the street before collapsing.
Passers-by dashed to her aid and she was taken to hospital for emergency surgery.

'I’m sorry. I’m going to kill Ryan, said father who stabbed boy of 4'says the Times

One resident in the street where the attacks happened claimed that he had overheard Donna saying that her father had told her, “Sorry, I am going to kill Ryan”, before repeatedly plunging the knife into her.
The girl was recovering in hospital after the attack in the West Yorkshire village of Slaithwaite, the setting for the ITV drama Where the Heart Is. Another man in the house was arrested at the scene of the attacks.

The Independent concentrates on the demonstrations in Burma

THE DEFIANCE OF THE PEOPLE,THE HOPE OF THE NATION it declares

In a remarkable show of defiance Burmese monks and nuns yesterday led 20,000 demonstrators through Rangoon in the largest protest against the country's military regime for almost two decades.
A day after hundreds of monks had walked to the house of the imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, thousands more returned to the streets in a show of numbers not seen since the pro-democracy marches of 1988. Back then the regime responded with a brutal crackdown, killing thousands of civilians and monks. While yesterday's march ended peacefully, it was clear that the authorities had increased security in the city and the monks and the other marchers were refused access to Ms Suu Kyi's house when they tried to repeat Saturday's extraordinary meeting.

Burmese monks' protests grow reports the Guardian adding that

In New York, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, expressed sympathy for the protesters and denounced Burma's military. "The Burmese people deserve better. They deserve (the) right to be able to live in freedom, just as everyone does," she said. "The brutality of this regime is well known, and so we'll be speaking about that, and I think the president will be speaking about it as well."

Meanwhile the Telegraph reports

Bomb denial as Iran's President Ahmadinejad visits US

The Iranian leader's emollient words came in a CBS interview recorded on the eve of a trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr Ahmadinejad's plans to address students at Columbia University and journalists at Washington's National Press Club heightened American fears that the visit could provide him with a propaganda coup.
When asked whether Iran's goal was to obtain a nuclear bomb, he said the answer was "a firm no". He told the interviewer: "You have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb."

And staying with the Telegraph it reports that

French PM Fillon tells farmers 'France is broke'

Francois Fillon made the undiplomatic outburst during a trip to the French island of Corsica, where farmers were demanding more government money.
"I am at the head of a state that is in a position of bankruptcy," he said.
"I am at the head of a state that for 15 years has been in chronic deficit. I am at the head of a state that has not once passed a balanced budget in 25 years. This can't go on."
Mr Fillon's government is due to announce the 2008 budget this week with a deficit of €41.5billion (£29billion).

Tesco to investigate riots at Bangladeshi factories reports the Indy

Tesco has said it will investigate the circumstances of a series of violent demonstrations at factories in Bangladesh where workers have been protesting for higher wages and better working conditions.
Britain's largest retailer confirmed that the affected factories were owned by one of its suppliers, although the locations where the demonstrations took place were not involved in providing products to Tesco. It said, however, that it would look into what led to the demonstrations at the factories owned by the Nassa Group of garment manufacturers.

Marcel Marceau: His mime's up

reports the Sun on the death of the world famous mime artist

Marceau, whose work inspired Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, never uttered a word on stage during more than 50 years of performing.
But away from the theatres and his white-faced clown character he was an eloquent exponent of his silent art.
He once said: “Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.

The Guardian reporting

Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died. He was 84.
Marceau died on Saturday in Paris, according to the French media. His former assistant, Emmanuel Vacca, announced the death on France-Info radio, but gave no details about the cause.
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau, notably through his famed personnage Bip, played the entire range of human emotions on stage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word.

According to the Mail

Men are smarter (and more stupid) than women, say scientists

For centuries men believed themselves to be smarter than the fairer sex, who they felt were only equipped for wifely duties.
Now a study has revealed that the male of the species is actually more intelligent - but he's more stupid as well.
When scientists measured the intelligence of more than 2,500 brothers and sisters, they found a disproportionate number of men in both the top 2 per cent and the bottom 2 per cent.

The Telegraph reveals

Britain's most unusual epitaphs

When Sarah Johnson died of dropsy in 1819 her doctors turned her gravestone into a ghoulish advert for their services, with full details of her agonising treatment.Almost two centuries later her sufferings, and the remarkable way in which they were recorded, have come to light as part of a nationwide search for unusual historical epitaphs. The full results of the search are to appear in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? magazine

Adding

Members of the public voted Mrs Johnson's gravestone as the most mysterious memorial in Britain. It details how the 28-year-old suffered a build-up of fluid, known as dropsy.
Doctors repeatedly "tapped" the excess fluid from her abdomen without anaesthetic.
The gravestone, found in Loughborough, Leics, names the two doctors who carried out the operations and the exact amount of fluid extracted – 315 gallons, two quarts and one pint — although the total given on the epitaph is different.

Finally one of those stories in the Sun

Firemen rescue kinky couple

A WOMAN handcuffed to a bed for a kinky romp was cut loose by 20 firemen — after her dozy lover lost the key.
Zoe Comaish, 32, was trapped for two hours as boyfriend Stuart Fisher tried in vain to free her.
Eventually he rang 999, but the three cops who came round only managed to cut the chain — and could not get the cuffs off her wrists.

With a wonderful quote

“We were just trying to spice up our sex life — but including three policemen and twenty fireman wasn’t in the plan.”