The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.

Times of Malta says thousands of euros in fines have been lost because wardens were under the impression that the Sliema-Gżira bus lane was illegal and so they only issued warnings. In another story, it says 52 illegally imported juvenile songbirds were confiscated in Gozo but hundreds more are believed to be on the market because of the lack of rigorous checks by government officials.

The Malta Independent says questions sent to the Labour and Nationalist parties on whether they have accepted donations from the Gaffarena family remained unanswered.

L-Orizzont says that Malta’s Citizenship Programme has attracted some 700 applicants, 40 per cent of the number of applications that can be accepted.

In-Nazzjon says the Opposition will be defending the Maltese and Gozitan interests at European institutions investigating the government on the new gas power station.

International news

Kathimerini quotes Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos saying the bailout deal reached with the country’s international creditors would take Greece forward as it would create “a more stable financial system without harming bank depositors”. His comments came after eurozone finance ministers agreed, after six hours of talks, to lend Greece up to €86 billion. However Tsakalotos said the success would depend on how Greeks respond to the challenges of tough reforms.

According to Le Soir, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said that the approval of a third bailout for Greece meant the country’s place in the Eurozone was not under threat. Juncker admitted that the past six months had been “difficult”. The Commission’s vice president for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, said the agreement should put Greece on the road to recovery.

Libya Herald reports Islamic State forces have taken Sirte Residential District No. 3 and started executing young men in the area, mainly members of the Farjan tribe. The newspaper quotes a source at Ibn Sina hospital saying that bodies of women as well as men shot in the head, execution style, had arrived there. Photos of others, “crucified” by IS have been circulating on social media. Other reports speak of 12 decapitated bodies being found near a school. There are also unconfirmed reports of the a medical centre in the district which was treating some of the wounded in the fighting being attacked and set on fire by IS.

Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker who died while being held captive by ISIS, was repeatedly raped by the terror group’s leader in Syria, her family told NBC News. US officials told the family in June of the assaults by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The sexual assaults are the latest outrage by ISIS, which has published graphic videos showing the beheading of captives, among other atrocities. The sexual abuse by the ISIS leader was first reported by London’s The Independent.

Asia Times says North Korea has today threatened to attack South Korean loudspeakers that are broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda messages across their border – the world’s most heavily armed. The warning follows Pyongyang’s earlier denial that it had planted land mines on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone that injured two South Korean soldiers last week. Seoul retaliated for those injuries by restarting the loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts for the first time in 11 years and suggested more actions could follow.

China has said that it will conduct nationwide inspections of businesses that handle dangerous chemicals after massive twin explosions killed 56 and forced 6,300 people into temporary shelters. Meanwhile, a fireman was pulled alive from the rubble as hundreds of firefighters continued to work to put out smoldering fires. Xinhua reported that 217 nuclear and biochemical materials experts from the Chinese military had been sent to the site to try to determine exactly what materials were involved in the blasts.

O Globo says the most violent night so far this year has left at least 19 people dead and seven injured in the Brazilian metropolitan area of Sao Paulo. The motive of the attacks was still unclear. The victims were shot to death within the span of about three hours.

La Hora reports 67 police officers were injured and 47 people arrested during protests in Ecuador against President Rafael Correa’s moves to seek a fourth term. Most of the injuries and arrests came in Quito, the epicenter of the protests.

According to Time magazine, US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got a much-needed boost at the end of a troubled week when she won the endorsement of the 720,000-member-strong International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). The endorsement came only a few days after Clinton, the proclaimed champion of women’s rights, was cold-shouldered by the National Nurses Union with 185,000 members, who instead endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The New York Times reports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is heading back to court. But when he appears at a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday, he won’t be on either end of a lawsuit. Instead, he’ll be reporting for jury duty. A judge fined him $250 earlier this year for ignoring every summons for nearly a decade

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says a man held for 34 years was released in the United States after the DNA analysis has established that it was not him who raped and killed a 15-year-old girl in 1976. The man, Lewis Fogle, now 63, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1982. Fogle, who got married three months ago, said he still had to get used to life outside the prison walls.

CNN reveals DNA analysis has proved that US President Warren G. Harding fathered a child out of wedlock with his long-rumoured mistress Nan Britton, who caused scandal when she went public over her affair in the White House in her 1927 best-selling memoir “The President’s Daughter”. Historians had questioned her claims and vilified her as a liar for nearly 90 years. Now AncestryDNA has said there is a 99.9 per cent certainly that Harding was the father of Britton’s daughter after analysing DNA from Britton’s grandson and descendants of the president.

 

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