The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
Most of the newspapers feature Birkirkara's championship celebrations despite being defeated by Valletta yesterday.
In other stories, The Times says BWSC has allowed the government to publish parts of the power station extension contract. It also reports that the EU has warned Malta on port state control.
The Malta Independent says that 74 per cent of Maltese consider air pollution as a problem. It also says that according to an EU report, Malta's economic recovery is expected to strengthen.
In-Nazzjon says the government will award 430 scholarships this year. It also reports that fireworks enthusiast John Abela is still in danger of dying after the Zejtun fireworks factory explosion.
l-orizzont quotes Labour leader Joseph Muscat saying in Marsaxlokk yesterday that a vote against the opposition motion on the power station today would be a vote against the report of the Auditor-General. It also reports that Transport Malta is doubling port handling charges.
The overseas press
Kathemerini says Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has denounced what he called the "murder" of two women and a man killed when the Athens bank they worked in was set on fire during protests by tens of thousands of people protesting the harsh new austerity measures. He told Parliament that "a demonstration is one thing and murder is quite another" and vowed that those responsible for the deaths would be found and brought to justice.
As the Greek anti-austerity unrest claimed its first lives, the European edition of The Wall Street Journal says European leaders have warned that the eurozone debt crisis could spread like a bushfire. Fears of contagion from the Greek debt crisis knocked the euro to a 14-month low and sent world stocks reeling. Moody's warned Portugal's debt could be downgraded.
Börzen Zeitung reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel called on parliament to approve Germany's contribution of €22.4 billion in loans to Greece. German public opinion opposed a Greek bailout but Mrs Merkel said it was essential.
As the British electorate go to the polls in the tightest election in years, Metro says the EU was predicting that whoever won would inherit a budget deficit even worse than that of Greece and The Times says it was the moment the country must stop running away from its debts. Sky News reports that the final opinion polls before the General Election show Britain was heading for a hung parliament.
Nigerian State TV has announced the death of President Umaru Yar'Adua after a long battle with kidney and heart ailments. He was 58. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, who has been running Africa's most populous nation for months during Yar'Adua's illness, would be sworn in as head of state. Elections are due by April 2011.
The New York Times says investigators were giving increased credence to possible links between the accused Times Square bomb plotter and the Pakistan Taliban. The attack has increased pressure on the Pakistani army to launch a new offensive in the northern part of Waziristan. US and European officials have long said that many of the terror plots in the West were hatched in the region.
The Jerusalem Post reports White House peace envoy George Mitchell has met with Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu as Israelis and Palestinians prepared to resume peace talks. Meanwhile, in Jordan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that "proximity talks" with the Israeli government won't last longer than four months. At the UN, the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China voiced support for making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone.
The Irish Times says Ireland has opened its airports after the Irish Aviation Authority restricted all flights into and out of the country due to risks posed by drifting Icelandic volcanic ash. Flights over Europe were hit by a six-day shutdown of airspace last month over fears of the effect on jet engines of ash from the volcanic eruption in Iceland.
A Brazilian archbishop has said adolescents were "spontaneously homosexual" and in need of guidance, while society at large was pedophile. Archbishop Dadeus Grings - a conservative priest who has made controversial statements in the past - told O Globo at a Brazilian bishops conference that society's woes were being reflected in the sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, every hour a baby was born in China with syphilis. Prostitutes along with gay and bisexual men, many of whom are married with families, were driving the epidemic. The easy-to-cure bacterial infection, which was nearly wiped out in China five decades ago, was now the most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease in its largest city, Shanghai.
Western Star says an Australian father of three has been sentenced to 15 months' jail in the Canadian province of Newfoundland for "luring" a 14-year-old girl over the internet and attempted sexual assault. He has admitted in court he made a "massive mistake" by communicating with the 14-year-old girl on internet chat rooms, Skype and instant messaging for more than a year before taking vacation from his job in Queensland as a technician and flying to Canada to meet her.
USA Today reports that a standup comedian who was sued for making mother-in-law jokes had the last laugh after a US federal judge threw the case out of court. Sunda Croonquist was sued two years ago after her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law said her jokes were holding them up to public ridicule. But US District Judge Mary L. Cooper of New Jersey concluded that the examples they cited - including one in which Croonquist says her sister-in-law's voice sounds like a cat in heat - fell under the category of protected. The cat-in-heat joke, the judge said, was "colourful, figurative rhetoric that reasonable minds would not take to be factual".