The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and l-orizzont lead with the bus strike ordered for today by the GWU.
Times of Malta also reports the reaction by the FKNK to the European Commission's decision to take Malta to court over bird trapping.
In-Nazzjon gives prominence to comments at a PN press conference that Identity Malta is 'infested with corruption'.
The Malta Independent says works on an illegal stable owned by Paul Polidano have been stopped.
The overseas press
The New York Times reports Pope Francis – who yesterday urged Congress and the American nation to abolish the death penalty, fight global warming and embrace immigrants – has arrived in New York to a rock-star welcome.
According to Saudi Radio, King Salman bin Abdulaziz has announced an investigation into a stampede and crush at the annual hajj in Mecca, in which at least 719 people died and 863 others were injured in the worst incident during Hajj since in the 1990 tragedy when 1,422 people died.
Berliner Zeitung says Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s 16 state governors have agreed on measures designed to streamline the country’s handling of the migrant influx – including declaring Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro as “safe” states of origin and switching some cash payments to newcomers to benefits in kind.
L’Express quotes UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres saying more needs to be done to improve the facilities to take in, help, register and screen people now arriving by boat in Europe at an average rate of 5,000 a day.
AP reports some 500 migrants have been stranded at a Christian Orthodox cemetery in no man’s land between Serbia and Croatia after police blocked their entry from Serbia near the Tovarnik border crossing to continue their journey toward Western Europe.
Hungarian troops have started laying down spools of razor wire at a new border – this time, a crossing with Slovenia as “a precautionary measure”. State television Magyar Televízió showed soldiers in thick protective gloves installing the razor wire across hundreds of meters on the Slovenian border.
The German business daily Handelsblatt expects the head of sports carmaker Porsche, Matthias Müller, would be appointed as Volkswagen’s new chief executive later today. Müller would replace Martin Winterkorn , who resigned on Wednesday in the wake of the scandal over manipulated emissions tests in the US and elsewhere, affecting some 11 million vehicles.
The Economist says Novartis plans to sell medications for heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disorders and cancers for $1 per month’s supply in poor countries. The world’s biggest drugmaker will start shipping the 15 different medications by year’s end to government and charity health programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Vietnam.
The remains of the sitter for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa have “very likely” been found in a Florence convent – but DNA evidence to clinch the find will only be available thanks to technology that doesn’t yet exist. Silvano Vinceti, an expert who has made ground-breaking discoveries based on Caravaggio’s remains, told Ansa the tomb of the Mona Lisa is “definitely” in Florence’s Sant’Orsola convent, carbon-14 tests on bones buried at the same time as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo have shown. Tests on one of three batches of bones have been dated back to the period of Lisa’s death in 1542.
According to KSL-TV, a 28-year-old Utah woman, who unexpectedly gave birth on a cruise ship four months before her due date, says she wrapped towels around the 0.68 kg boy and, with the help of medical staff, managed to keep him alive until the ship reached port. Emily Morgan, of Ogden, said doctors didn’t expect her son Haiden to live, but thanks to strong lungs, a makeshift incubator and an early arrival in Puerto Rico, the baby made it. He’s now receiving care at a neonatal intensive care unit in Miami.