The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and the Malta Independent report how a spate of Sliema thefts has been solved and five arraigned.
Times of Malta also says a new law is being prepared to protect vulnerable elderly.
In-Nazzjon says three environment NGOs have slammed the Mepa demerger proposals.
l-orizzont in a right of reply story, says a man has contradicted documents that he used government properties.
The overseas press
Saudi Radio quotes authorities saying high winds were responsible for the collapse of a construction crane onto the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which left some 117 people dead and almost 250 injured. The head of the Saudi civil defence department said there was heavy rain at the time with winds reaching 83kilomtres and hour.
Libya Herald announces the Security Council has extended the mandate of the UN Support Mission in Libya for a further six months, in anticipation of an imminent deal on a government of national accord. The 15 members of the Council voted unanimously that UNSMIL should continue at least until March 15 next year. The council made it clear that the chaos in Libya was boosting the trafficking in illegal migrants.
A record 432,761 migrants have made the perilous Mediterranean crossing to reach Europe so far this year, more than doubling the total for 2014 already. Tribune de Genève says the International Organisation for Migration estimates that 2,748 have drowned making the deadly journey.
At least four countries have firmly rejected an EU plan to impose refugee quotas to ease a worsening migrant crisis. Die Presse reports Hungary, which along with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland said it would not support the proposal, threatened instead to arrest people who cross the country’s border illegally will be arrested from next week.
According to Magyar Nemzet, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said migrants entering Hungary in their thousands in the past weeks had “rebelled” against his police force, and order had to be restored. In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper, he wanted the EU to give Syria’s neighbours – Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan – €3 billion in financial aid to help those displaced by the civil war.
ABC reports a young American who assumed the online identity of an Australian jihadist has been arrested for an alleged plan to bomb a September 11 memorial event. Joshua Ryne, 20, Goldberg, who posed online as “Australi Witness”, was arrested in Florida, has admitted to providing instructions on how to make a pressure cooker bomb with the intent “to kill and injure persons”, according to court documents. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The British Labour Party will announce its new leader later this morning after a turbulent three-month campaign. The Guardian says left-wing anti-austerity MP Jeremy Corbyn, who is favourite to be elected party leader, is to attempt to offer a new era of civility in Westminster politics, promising to end “clubhouse theatrical abuse across the floor of parliament”.
Cuba’s government has pardoned 3,522 prisoners as a goodwill gesture ahead of Pope Francis’ visit between September 19- and 22 by. The official daily Granma announced that among those pardoned were prisoners over 60 years of age or younger than 20 and without a criminal record, women and the chronically ill, and foreigners whose countries of origin have vowed to repatriate them.
Sputnik reports Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka returned safely to Earth with two other astronauts from the International Space Station early this morning with the record for having spent the most time in space – 879 days over five separate trips. He touched ground on the barren Kazakh steppe on schedule along with Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
Al Ahram says an Egyptian woman and child were killed in a car bomb, and four soldiers died in a separate explosion in the northern Sinai Peninsula, where the military is engaged in a sweeping campaign against jihadists.
AFP reports Russia and the European Union have discussed ways of ending Russia’s gas dispute with Ukraine to allow for the resumption of gas supplies to Russia’s war-torn ex-Soviet neighbour. Last July, Gazprom stopped all natural gas supplies to Ukraine. Russian energy minister Alexander Novak claimed after the meeting in Vienna that Brussels would provide money for Ukraine’s gas purchases.
The Straits Times announces Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party has won a landslide victory in a snap parliamentary election. The PAP took almost 70 per cent of the vote, winning 83 of 89 seats in parliament.
Sky News says members of a British paedophile ring who attacked babies and toddlers and streamed the abuse online have been sentenced to a total of 78 years in prison. They had been convicted of 30 child sex abuse offences, including conspiracy to rape and the rape of a child under the age of 13.