The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta leads with the discovery of hidden fireworks on a van yesterday and government plans to help low-income workers and pensioners while narrowing the deficit in the forthcoming Budget.
The Malta Independent also says the Budget is to look at lower income strata. It also reports how the prime minister yesterday said it was not his remit to take steps against accountants.
l-orizzont reports that there is widespread satisfaction that the new university will regenerate the south of Malta.
In-Nazzjon says the Auditor-General has started an investigation into the state guarantees given to a private consortium for the building of the new power station.
The overseas press
CNN says a man fatally shot an armed security officer at a federal building in lower Manhattan and then killed himself. It quotes the NYPD chief saying the 68-year-old man walked up to the metal detectors in the lobby and shot the guard at close range with a handgun.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has said the shooting yesterday on board an Amsterdam-Paris train, which injured two passengers, was a “terrorist attack”. Le Soir reports Michel wrote on Twitter: “I condemn the terrorist attack on the Thalys (train) and express my sympathy for the victims.”, referring to the high-speed service. According to French newspaper Voix du Nord, two American soldiers detained the man but were injured themselves. The assailant was apparently of North African origin. According to Le Parisien, an American and a Briton were among the injured. One of the wounded was shot and another stabbed.
Nova Makedonija reports Macedonia said it will allow a limited number of “vulnerable” migrants to enter the country, after it sealed its border with Greece to them, leaving thousands of refugees stuck in no-man’s land. Police issued temporary transit documents to 181 migrants, mostly from Syria, Bangladesh and Pakistan, wanting to cross the Balkan country on their way to northern Europe in the last 24 hours.
Anti-immigrant Northern League leader Matteo Salvini has called on the Italian authorities to ‘dump’ migrants on disused oil platforms abandoned by Italy’s ENI energy concern “so as not to disturb” Italians. Salvini told his party’s Radio Padania there were “numerous” ENI platforms in disuse in the sea and it would be “a smart solution to turn them into centres of waiting, reception and identification so as not to disturb the surrounding population”.
Al Thawra reports Isis militants have destroyed the fifth century Catholic complex of Mar Elian in Qaryqatayn, near Homs in Syria. An Isis a video showed bulldozers desecrating the church, followed by exhumation of the remains of Sant’Elian, to whom the monastery was dedicated. The monastery, considered one of the most important Catholic centres of Syria, every year on September 9 at the saint’s day, was visited by thousands of pilgrims.
Rome anti-terror police sources have told Ansa they are probing a bride-for-hire racket involving destitute Italians and foreign nationals for possible terrorist links.
The Times reports Malala Yousafzai, the teenage education rights campaigner who went to Britain after the Pakistani Taliban tried to kill her, has scored high marks in national school exams. Malala, shot in the head three years ago for championing girls’ rights to education, gained six A* grades, the highest possible, and four As, the second highest, in her GCSEs.
Il Tempo quotes the parish priest who officiated at a Rome mafia boss’s Godfather-style funeral saying he would do so again if asked. It also emerged yesterday that the horse-drawn hearse used for Vittorio Casamonica was the same as that used for legendary comic Totò in 1967.
Pessimists who had high hopes for the Earth ending this September can now rest a little easier, as NASA has confirmed that an asteroid will not destroy the planet next month. Sputnik says NASA has confirmed that the Earth will not be hit by an asteroid, despite Internet rumours which claimed a space rock would smash into either the US or Mexico in September. Various Internet blogs raised concerns that an asteroid strike would occur between September 15 and 28, and would annihilate coastlines all along the Atlantic Ocean.