The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports how Juan Manuel Barroso has warned EU member states to beware of extremist views on migration. It also reports that Barack Obama has accepted the resignation of the US Ambassador to Malta.
The Malta Independent says the UN and Libya have agreed on the provision of humanitarian aid.
In-Nazzjon leads with the price reductions announced yesterday on 17 medicines. It also says that the police are to receive new DNA analysis equipment.
l-orizzont says Malta will guarantee €50.5m of Portuguese debt.
The overseas press
The Wall Street Journal reports that the international credit agency Standard and Poor has downgraded its assessment of the long-term outlook of government finances in the United States from "stable" to "negative". Standard & Poor's said its view was based on the huge American budget deficit and the fact that Washington’s plans for handling it were not clear.
The Associated Press reports that the UN humanitarian chief in Libya, Valerie Amos, has said that the Libyan government had promised her access to the besieged rebel city of Misurata but at the same time, government forces continued to pound the city with rockets and artillery. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, at least 267 people have been killed in Misrata during more than seven weeks of siege.
Al Libiya TV quotes the Libyan government spokesman denying firing heavy weapons, including rockets and tank shells, at the city. Moussa Ibrahim said if there was killing of civilians, that it was the rebels who were responsible.
Meanwhile, the BBC reports that almost a thousand people evacuated from Misurata have arrived in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on a ship charted by the aid agency The International Organisation for Migration. The agency said thousands more were waiting to be rescued.
Arab News quotes the Syrian Interior Ministry saying the unrest in the country amounted to an armed insurrection and warned it would act with determination to impose security and stability. The statement came after more than 5,000 anti-government protesters occupied the centre of Homs, the country's third-largest city.
Al Ahram says protesters led by hardline Islamists in southern Egypt said they won't end their campaign of civil disobedience until the government removes a newly-appointed Coptic Christian governor. The protesters, many from the ultraconservative Salafi trend of Islam, have been sitting on train tracks, taken over government buildings and blocked main roads in the southern city of Qena, insisting the new governor won't properly implement Islamic law.
Daily Champion reports that Nigerian election officials have declared that President Goodluck Jonathan as the winner of the country’s presidential election. His return to office has been marred by violence in the north where supporters of his main opponent, General Muhammadu Buhari, were reported to have set alight houses, churches and cars – highlighting the religious and ethnic tensions still dividing Africa's most populous nation. President Jonathan has appealed for calm.
London’s The Guardian reports that a new opinion poll shows opposition to the alternative vote system was strengthening, with the No campaign securing 58 per cent against the Yes’s 42 per cent. Britons go to a referendum on whether the alternative vote (AV) should replace first-past-the-post system of voting in the general elections.
Ashati TV reports that radiation levels were far too high for repair crews to go inside buildings of Japan's crippled nuclear reactor. Nevertheless, officials remained hopeful they could stick to their new "roadmap" for cleaning up the radiation leak and stabilising the Fukushima plant by the end of the year so they could begin returning tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes.
According to Granma, Cuba's Communist Party has began the process of electing new leaders in a vote that was likely to formally name Raul Castro as first secretary in place of his brother. All eyes were on the selection of the No. 2 position, which could signal the Castros' choice of an eventual successor.
The Washington Times says that a Pentagon inquiry into a Rolling Stone magazine profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal that led to his dismissal as the top US commander in Afghanistan has cleared him of wrongdoing. The probe's results also called into question the accuracy of the magazine's report last June, which quoted anonymously people around McChrystal making disparaging remarks about members of President Barack Obama's national security team, including Vice President Joe Biden.
Rome’s Il Tempo reports that Pietro Ferrero, the CEO of the Ferrero Group holding company that produces confections and a member of one of Italy's richest families died on Monday after falling from a bicycle while on a business trip in South Africa. He was 47. Ferrero was also chairman of Ferrero SpA, the Italian branch of the family-run company and the heart of the chocolate maker empire.
The Los Angeles Times has won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series revealing that politicians in the struggling, working-class city of Bell, California, were paying themselves enormous, six-figure salaries.
The Georgia Daily News reports that a US over-protective father, who offered a $3,000 reward to anyone who could deliver his daughter's boyfriend to him "dead or alive", has ended up being charged in court with solicitation of murder after the couple reported him to the police. Domingos José Oliveira put up a dozen "wanted" posters of his 19-year-old daughter's partner – who is 14 years older than her and a registered sex offender, convicted of abusing 14-15-year-olds. The offence carries a maximum penalty of nine years in prison.