The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports that a Maltese sea captain in Libya is to face charges of smuggling.
The Malta Independent quotes Parliamentary Secretary Jose' Herrera saying all those criminally responsible for illegal visas will pay.
In-Nazzjon leads with PN statements that the power station is being built on 'half truths' and that the government has tried hiding the hospital activity report.
l-orizzont gives prominence to a GWU call for ST Microelectronics to send officials from its top management to Malta to resolve an impasse in pay talks.
The overseas press
Death and desperation mounted in Europe’s migrant crisis yesterday as Austrian police said 71 people appeared to have suffocated in the back of an abandoned truck, while an estimated 200 people were feared drowned off Libya when two overloaded boats capsized. The New York Times reports UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “horrified and heartbroken” by the latest deaths and called on all governments to act with compassion and humanity.
Austria’s Die Presse says 71 people – 59 men, eight women and four children, the youngest just a year old – suffocated after being locked in the back of a truck. It remained unclear why the migrants were left to die. Hungary’s Echo TV announced the Budapest authorities had arrested four suspected smugglers.
Meanwhile, Adnkronos reports British police stopped a truck carrying 27 immigrants in a service station along a highway in Surrey and arrested the driver – a 50 year-old Italian. On board the truck with Italian license plates were boys of Iraqi, Iranian, Vietnamese, Syrian and Turkish nationality.
Deutsche Welle quotes German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying an EU summit on refugee policy has to wait until EU interior ministers have completed their negotiations. Merkel said the EU interior ministers meeting this weekend would be looking into “rapid changes to the asylum system”.
CNN reports a Virginia teenager who had pleaded guilty to online support of the militant group Islamic State (IS) was sentenced to just over 11 years in federal prison. Ali Amin, 17, is the first minor prosecuted by the United States in such a case.
Tropical Storm Erika has started losing steam over Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but it left behind a trail of destruction that killed at least 20 people on the small eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. El Caribe reports Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said in a televised address the island has been set back 20 years in the damage inflicted by the storm.
The Daily Express reveals two Indian sisters have been sentenced to be raped and then paraded naked as punishment for their brother running off and potentially impregnating a married woman. Amnesty International has launched a petition appealing for India’s authorities to intervene.
LBC announces a driver who became intimate in his car with his girlfriend moments before a crash which left her dead has been jailed for seven years. Minesh Parbat, 36, dropped his trousers and underpants at the wheel of his BMW Z3 to take part in a sex act with Lisa Watling. The 28-year-old woman was found wearing only a T-shirt and bra after Parbat crashed on the A2011 in Crawley, West Sussex, on 9 March last year. The rest of her clothes were found in the car’s footwell.
Avvenire announces the death of the Vatican’s former ambassador to the Dominican Republic who had been charged with sexually abusing children in the Caribbean country. Jozef Wesolowski, 67, was found dead in the Vatican room where he has been held on house arrest, and initial checks “indicated that the death was from natural causes”.
AFP reports Pope Francis has sent his blessing to a lesbian author of children’s books dealing with same-sex families, wishing her and her wife well in their work. As Vatican officials scrambled to clarify that the message was simply a standard courtesy which did not signal any change in Church teaching on the subject, the author told AFP she had been pleasantly surprised to have received such a positive response.
New York Post says American business tycoon Donald Trump, who continues to lead the race for the Republican party’s US presidential nomination, has reportedly placed an offer to buy the San Lorenzo de Almagro football club in Buenos Aires, of whom Pope Francis is a renowned and avid fan. According the tabloid, Trump’s move might be an attempt to win over a slice of Catholic support. San Lorenzo’s Vice-President and Argentine TV host Marcelo Tinelli, however, dismissed the reports as “totally crazy”.