The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.

Times of Malta  says the leaders of Libya's rival parliaments rejected a UN-brokered deal yesterday but offered hope that they could agree on a unity government.

The Malta Independent reports that Libyan factions will start working as of today to form a unity government.

MaltaToday says benefit fraud is being made easy by a lack of checks on applicants, the auditor has reported.

In-Nazzjon says that after seven months, the American University of Malta is no longer a university.

l-orizzont also leads with the meeting of the rival Libyan leaders in Malta.

The overseas press

London’s The Times reports the EU’s European Union’s first paramilitary force will have the power to take control of a nation’s borders without the consent of sovereign governments under plans to protect borders amid the present migrant crisis. The plan will almost treble its spending on frontier defence and create a 1,500-strong rapid reaction force. It will have funding worth €322 million by 2020.

AFP says that after four years of talks, the European Union has reached a “strong compromise” on data protection though members failed to agree on a 13-year-age limit for parental consent for social media such as Facebook or Instagram. Instead, member states will now be free to set their own limits on young people aged between 13 and 16 years.

Il Tempo quotes Europol director Rob Wainwright saying that between 5,000 and 7,000 foreign fighters are estimated to have fought in Syria and Iraq and have been further radicalised. At the end of the Balkan Region Police Chiefs Conference in Rome, he added that if they subsequently retraced their steps it was in order to carry out attacks, which made them a danger that needed to be faced up to and a difficult threat to identify.

Fox News says that the latest debate in the United States, between Republican candidates vying for the party’s nomination for president, has been dominated by a discussion about how to defend the country from terror attacks. Front-runner Donald Trump has come under attacks from other candidates over his controversial call for Muslims to be banned from entering America. Jebb Bush called him “a chaos candidate” who’d be “a chaos president”.

Los Angeles Times reports officials have defended a decision to close the nation’s second largest school district after receiving a “rare threat” apparently from an overseas email account. The threat was made against “not one, but many schools” in the district, LA Schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said. LA Police Chief Charlie Beck said the threat also described an attack with assault rifles. The FBI has confirmed the security alert was not a credible threat.

El Tiempo quotes Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos describing a key agreement signed with left-wing Farc rebels as “a major step” towards signing a full peace accord in March next year. The latest accord puts the victims at the centre of the peace process.

The Daily Mail says Prince of Wales has routinely received copies of secret Cabinet papers. The revelation follows a three-year Freedom of Information battle between the Cabinet Office and the campaign group Republic. Heirs to the throne are thought to have been on the list since the 1930s. The group has written to Prime Minister David Cameron demanding Prince Charles is removed from the circulation.

The Daily Mirror leads with a picture of Tim Peake, the first Briton to travel to the International Space Station, who blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome with Russian space veteran Yury Malenchenko and Tim Kopra of NASA for a six-month mission. Live television broadcasts showed fire from the boosters of the Soyuz rocket cut a bright light through the overcast sky at the Russia-operated cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Warsaw Times says a cyclist in Poland has survived after being hit by a fast-moving train at a level crossing. The 26-year-old man was knocked over and fell to the ground following the dramatic crash, receiving only injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening. He was also fined €165 for ignoring a red light. CCTV footage has been released of the incident which happened last November. The country’s national railway service put it out to highlight the dangers of not paying attention at level crossings.

The Irish Times reports women from Republic of Ireland had 19,947 abortions in England and Wales during the four-year-period between 2010 and2014. Those from Northern Ireland were 4,652. Some women may have had more than one abortion.

Ansa says a Rome judge has ordered the arrest of nine people accused of forming a drug-trafficking ring on the outskirts of the Italian capital with links to the Calabrian Ndrangheta. The suspects face charges including criminal association with the mafia.

Pope Francis is the “media phenomenon of the year”, according to research institute Censis, which has said 77.9 per cent of Catholics in Rome called the pope’s charisma one of Catholicism’s strengths. Press Gazette says Censis also cited data from American fact tank Pew Research Centre, showing that Pope Francis outranked both US presidential candidate Hilary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin in US media coverage.