The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports how a huge majority of investors in the La Valette Property Fund took up the BOV offer after the losses suffered by the fund. It also reports that Arriva drivers may not show up for work on Sunday because of disappointment over their roster.
The Malta Independent reports that Mepa yesterday issued an outline permit for the new science park in San Gwann. It also reports that Caritas is calling got a court specifically for drug cases.
l-orizzont says that the GWU is seeking a meeting with Arriva on the drivers’ roster.
In-Nazzjon focuses on the benefits for the economy of conference travel. It also reports that a driver was awarded compensation of €66,000 for suffering a 10% disability in a traffic accident.
The overseas press
Börzen Zeitung reports that eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Sunday to rubber-stamp the release of a €12 billion instalment of rescue loans from the existing €110 billion bailout. They will also discuss the terms of a second rescue plan meant to reassure markets over Greece's longer-term prospects. The EU and FMI had said they would refuse to pay out the next installment unless Greek lawmakers approved a new five-year package of €28 billion worth of spending cuts and tax hikes, and a €50 billion privatisation plan, before the end of June. The lawmakers delivered what was asked of them, in votes on Wednesday and yesterday. Global markets cheered, but anger in the streets of Athens grew and quickly turned violent. More than 300 people, nearly half of them police, were injured in two days of rioting.
Associated Press says that as China and Russia raised concerns over revelations that France had supplied arms to civilians fighting Muammar Gaddafi's forces, Libya's opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril said that rebels needed more weapons and funding. In Austria, the rebel leader said foreign deliveries of military hardware would give the rebels a chance to "decide this battle quickly (and) to spill as little blood as possible". He warned that unless the opposition council received large amounts of foreign money, schools would not be able to open later this year. It follows warnings from the rebels that hospitals were also running short on cash and supplies.
Meanwhile, The Times reports British Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced that Britain was sending 5,000 sets of body armour, 6,650 uniforms, 5,000 high-visibility vests and communications equipment to police officers in rebel-held areas. He said the new supplies would help Libya's opposition protect civilians and the growing community of diplomats and aid workers in eastern Libya.
As British trade unions promised the government “an autumn of discontent”, the Daily Mirror announces that doctors might now strike to defy government cuts affecting pays and pensions. More than 600,000 British teachers and public sector workers swapped classrooms and offices for picket lines in what the newspaper said was “the biggest stoppage for 30 years”.
Ottawa Sun reports Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been greeted by enthusiastic crowds in Canada at the start of their first official overseas tour together. They laid a wreath at the national war memorial.
Le Petit Journal says celebrations have begun in the principality of Monaco to mark the wedding of its monarch Prince Albert and his fiancée, the former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock. The veteran rock band The Eagles gave a free concert at a football stadium. This evening, composer Jean Michel Jarre will take a starring role in a concert and an extravagant fireworks display is set to light up the sky of the Cote D'Azur to add to the glamour of the occasion. The concert is being screened live on Euronews.
China has opened the world’s longest cross-sea bridge. State-run CCTV says the Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26 miles long and links China’s eastern port city of Qingdao to an offshore island, Huangdao. The 35-metre-wide bridge is the longest of its kind and cost more than 10bn yuan (€1billion). It has taken four years to build the bridge, which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars. According to Guinness World Records, the previous record holder for a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. The Chinese bridge is more than 2.5 miles longer.