The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta says the Malta-Gozo bridge would cost €1billion and take four years to build.
The Malta Independent on Sunday says the police have remained silent about the disgraced officer involved in last week’s shooting.
MaltaToday says the inquiry into the shooting by a ministerial driver is set to give Labour its next resignation.
It-Torca reports how the prime minister invited the opposition to nominate the chairman of an inquiry into last week’s shooting.
Il-Mument says minister Manuel Mallia and his chief of staff Silvio Scerri have become millstones around the prime minister.
Illum says three retired judges would sit on the inquiry into last week’s shooting.
KullHadd says differences about the Budget have surfaced within the opposition.
The overseas press
The slaughter of 28 people – 19 men and nine women – on a bus in Kenya was a bid to start a religious war, a senior adviser to President Uhuru Kenyatta has told the BBC. At dawn yesterday, al-Shabab gunmen attacked the bus, shooting dead non-Muslim passengers who could not quote verses from the Koran.
Tunisia goes to the polls today to vote for a new president – just a month after electing its parliament. Les Temps reports more than five million voters will choose between 27 candidates. Beji Caid Essebsi, who is pegged as the frontrunner, has promised to restore stability in the country which has suffered from economic stagnation and a rise of Islamist terrorism.
Al Kkeleej announces a 51.5 per cent turnout in the parliamentary and municipal elections, in Bahrain despite the opposition’s call to boycott the elections. These were the first elections in Bahrain since a failed protest against the monarchy in 2011.
Reuters reports Islamic State militants have killed at least 25 members of the Sunni Muslim Albu Fahd tribe in a village on the eastern edge of the provincial capital Ramadi. Local officials believe the killings were in revenge for tribal opposition to the radical Islamists.
Air strikes by US-led forces in Syria have killed 910 people, including 52 civilians, since the start of the campaign against Islamic State militants two months ago. Al Sham quotes the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying the majority of the deaths, 785, were Islamic State fighters.
Hurriyet reports US Vice President Biden has announced the US would provide nearly $135 million in additional humanitarian aid to help feed civilians affected by the ongoing war in Syria. Biden’s trip in Istanbul was met by some 300 people protesting chanting "Biden get out. The country is ours". He did not see the protest.
Itar-Tass says Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the West of seeking a regime in Moscow. Lavrov was responding to US Vice President Joe Biden’s statement in Ukraine on Friday, hinting at possible further sanctions on Russia in protest of its role in Ukraine.
The United States still hopes to get a nuclear deal with Iran by Monday’s deadline but is also examining “options,” a senior US official has told AFP. The comment came as Iran and world powers appeared still a long way from being able to overcome major differences and agree a deal by Monday.
Japanese authorities have said at least 23 people were injured as a result of a 6.8-magnitude earthquake yesterday. According to NHK, the authorities have warned people of aftershocks in the days to come.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has called on all Germans to “adjust” to the fact that they would be seeing “high numbers of asylum seekers and refugees for years to come”. In an interview with Der Tagesspiegel, de Maizeire said in the first six months of this year, more than 65,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, figures that topped numbers seen in any other industrialized country.
Ansa reports 598 illegal immigrants – including 31 women, six of them pregnant, and two minors – have landed at Porto Empedocle. They immigrants – from Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Burundi, Senegal and Sudan – were rescued from five small boats.
Le Monde says a bubonic plague outbreak has killed 40 people in Madagascar. WHO warns the disease could spread rapidly in the capital Antananarivo, where there is high population density and poor sanitation.
Deutsche Welle announces a 1914 watercolour by Adolf Hitler has fetched €130,000 at auction in Nuremberg. The painting was one of about 2,000 works that Hitler painted between 1905 and 1920 as a struggling young artist.