The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta says Jonathan Pace, killed on Thursday, was shot with a gun whose importation is banned.
The Malta Independent says the Fgura murder was a drive-by shooting.
In-Nazzjon quotes Mario de Marco saying Parliament was ridiculed when Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco was allowed to retire before the impeachment motion was discussed.
l-orizzont reports that according to the police, Thursday's murder in Fgura was similar to that of Joseph Galea (Il-Gilda).
The overseas press
Western countries have angrily condemned the unauthorized entry of a Russian aid convoy into rebel-held eastern Ukraine. The BBC reports the United States and Germany called it “a dangerous escalation” and there were fears Russian would use it as pretext for a full-scale invasion. NATO said earlier Russia had been moving heavy weaponry across the border. Moscow says the convoy only carried generators, food and drink.
The New York Times says the UN Security Council met for emergency consultations on Ukraine, which described the convoy as an “invasion”. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced his deep concern and called for restraint.
Lithuania has announced that its honorary consul in the rebel-held Ukrainian city of Luhansk has been murdered. Baltic Times reports he was kidnapped and brutally killed by terrorists. The EU said the murder demonstrated the urgent need to end the violence in eastern Ukraine.
The Jerusalem Post quotes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Hamas would pay a heavy price for the death of a four-year-old Israeli boy in a mortar attack from Gaza. The boy was the fourth Israeli civilian to be killed in the present conflict.
Reuters reports Libya’s coast guards have recovered the bodies of 20 migrants, including a child, who drowned off Tripoli’s coast, saying 16 others were found alive but that many more remain missing. The authorities could not tell what exactly happened to the boat they believe was carrying up to 200 illegal migrants, possibly from sub-Saharan Africa.
Al-Arabya says suspected Shiite militiamen have killed more than 60 people in an attack on a Sunni mosque in eastern Iraq. Gunmen burst in during Friday prayers and opened fire on worshipers.
According to Tribune de Genève, the UN has reported the death toll from three years of Syria’s civil war had risen to more than 191,000 people. The figure, covering the period from March 2011 to April 2014, was the first issued by the UN’s human rights office since July 2013, when it documented more than 100,000 had been killed.
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organisation that works to find children who were kidnapped under Argentina’s dictatorship, has announced that the granddaughter of one of the group’s late founders has been identified following an extensive search. Clarin reports the granddaughter was born in 1977 while Zubasnabar de la Cuadra’s daughter Elena, who was five months pregnant when abducted, was being held in a clandestine torture cell. The grandmother passed away in 2008 without having met her grandchild.
South China Morning Post says Interpol announced it had launched a multinational investigation into what Thailand has dubbed the “baby factory” case: a Hong Kong-based Japanese businessman who has 16 surrogate babies and an alleged desire to father hundreds more. Police raided a Bangkok condominium earlier this month and found nine babies and nine nannies living in a few unfurnished rooms filled with baby bottles, bouncy chairs, play pens and diapers. They have since identified Mitsutoki Shigeta as the father of those babies, as well as seven others.
La Nacion reports a Brazilian doctor who fled to Paraguay three years ago and lived in disguise to avoid arrest for the alleged rape of 39 of his patients was finally caught by the police on Wednesday. Seventy-year-old Roger Abdelmassih, who hid behind a wig and sunglasses, specialised in artificial insemination and lived in a luxurious villa in the Paraguayan capital Asuncion with his wife and two children.
AFP says that ‘Pepe the Missionary’, a giant tortoise which rose to fame as one of the most photographed animals on Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, has died of natural causes. It was 60 years old. Officials said its death does not put his species in danger. About 2,000 tortoises from the same species still live in their native habitat.