The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times quotes Cyrus Engerer saying he was given to understand by the police that his court case would be heard behind closed doors. It also reports how the Marsa power station has exceeded its operational hours.
The Malta Independent leads with plans for a sports village at Marsa, adding that there is no word yet on the sports village at White Rocks.
l-orizzont gives prominence to the Marsa power station story.
In-Nazzjon says hotels are having a good summer. It also says Labour is twisting the facts in the Cyrus Engerer case.
The overseas press
Al Jazeera reports that General Abdel Fattah Younes, the military commander of the Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, has been killed together with two of his aides. The head of the rebel National Transitional Council Mustafa, Abdul-Jalil, said Younes was killed by assailants, and the leader of the group responsible had been arrested. The exact circumstances of the killings were unclear and Mr Jalil did not say directly that the assailants were allied with Col Gaddafi. Gen Younes is a former Libyan interior minister who helped bring Col Gaddafi to power in 1969. He defected to the rebel side in February.
The Washington Times says House Republican leaders have abruptly delayed a vote on a Bill extending the US government’s debt limit and cutting federal spending. They had been struggling to line up the 216 votes needed for the Bill to pass, and they had encountered opposition from some conservatives.
Cyprus Mail reports President Demetris Christofias has asked his entire cabinet to resign to make way for a full reshuffle. The move comes after an explosion on July 11 took out the main power station. Many Cypriots are said to blame state incompetence and negligence for the accident. And the country now faces a possible bill of €1 billion to fix the damage. Thirteen people were killed in the blast and half the island's energy was cut. The ratings agency Moody's had earlier cited the explosion as one of its reasons for downgrading the Cyprus government's bond rating by two notches.
The Irish Examiner announces that the Vatican's envoy to Ireland has been transferred to Prague. Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza had been at the centre of a diplomatic row between Ireland and Rome over the church’s inaction to paedofile priests and had been called back to Rome for consultations after Prime Minister Enda Kenny's hard-hitting attack on the Vatican.
The Guardian says that Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail. The evidence that police have found in Mulcaire's notes is believed to relate to a phone given to Payne by former NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks to help her stay in touch with her supporters.
La Republica reports that former army officer Ollanta Humala has been sworn in as Peru's new president, vowing to eradicate poverty and social exclusion. His inauguration was attended by regional leaders, although not by outgoing President Alan Garcia. Humala defeated right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in June's second round.
The Sun leads with the story of a Manchester woman hit by devastating amnesia recounting how she went to bed as a mum aged 32 and woke thinking she was still 15. Naomi Jacobs recalled nothing after 1992, did not know she had a son and thought she was sitting her GCSEs. Naomi, now 35, was diagnosed as suffering from transient global amnesia – a form of acute memory loss brought on by stress. When it struck she was struggling to cope with studying for a psychology degree at the same time as raising her son and running her own homeopathy business. Naomi, who has now finally regained full memory, said. "It wasn't fun.”
A Chinese bus driver was driving his vehicle in rush hour traffic and didn’t realise he had two wheels missing. Shi Shao, 48, thought the motor's suspension had been damaged and continued to drive the vehicle before passengers alerted him to the fact the back end was dragging along the road, causing sparks, Metro reports. The two detached wheels were reportedly found a considerable distance away from the pink bus, which brought peak hour traffic in the city of Shaoyang to a standstill as a result. Nobody was hurt in the incident, which resulted in Mr Shi stopping the bus in the middle of the road and waiting for a tow truck.