The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports that a tracking system is to be installed on school vans.
The Malta Independent reports how a man was jailed for six years for abusing six young nieces.
In-Nazzjon leads with yesterday's press conference by the prime minister on the fourth year of the legislature.
l-orizzont says GWU General Secretary Tony Zarb has called on party leaders not to promise what they cannot deliver.
The overseas press
ABC quotes Japan and South Korea confirming that a long-range North Korean rocket which was launched earlier this morning crashed into the ocean shortly after take-off.
The New York Times says that with the ceasefire in Syria largely holding, the UN Security Council has been discussing how to deploy observers to monitor further progress in the six-point international peace plan. Syria says it will accept UN monitors. Earlier, the international envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, told the council that the Syrian government had not yet fulfilled all of its commitments. Meanwhile, Reuters report that Syrian opposition activists called mass protests for Friday to test the fragile, day-old ceasefire by President Bashar al-Assad's forces as international pressure mounted for Damascus to fully comply with the UN-backed peace plan.
As clashes escalated on the border between divided Sudan, Associated Press quotes President Salva Kiir telling the South Sudanese parliament that he would not withdraw his troops that this week entered a disputed border region with Sudan. The UN Security Council has demanded an immediate end to fighting, calling for South Sudanese troops to withdraw from the Heglig oil field they seized on Tuesday and for Sudan to end aerial bombardments.
Angola Press says soldiers have taken control of large parts of Bissau, the capital of the West African state of Guinea Bissau. Troops attacked the residence of the outgoing Prime Minister, Carlos Gomez, who won the first round of a presidential election last month. His whereabouts are unknown. The five opposition candidates alleged fraud by the governing party in the first ballot.
Al Ahram reports that the Egyptian parliament has approved a draft law banning senior figures from the administration of former President Hosni Mubarak from running for public office. However, observers say it was unlikely that the military council, which took power from Mubarak, would ratify the law.
The Los Angeles Post says the American neighbourhood volunteer, who shot dead an unarmed Afro-American teenager in Florida, has appeared in court for the first time. George Zimmerman is charged with the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin last February. The Florida prosecutor’s initial decision not to press charges against Zimmerman led to angry civil rights protests across the US.
Dawn reports the Pakistani parliament has unanimously approved new guidelines for the country’s troubled relationship with the United States – a move that could pave the way for the re-opening of a supply lines to Nato troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan blocked the move last November after US air strikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border.
The Chronicle says President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is back home from Asia as his party denied reports he had suffered a health emergency. Mugabe, 88, was met at the main Harare airport by party leaders and military chiefs under normal protocol. Mugabe's party had earlier in the week dismissed reports that he had been gravely ill.
Metro reports that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that German courts did not violate a Leipzig man’s privacy rights by convicting him for incest with his younger sister – with whom he fathered four children. The case of Patrick Stuebing, who was sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2005, prompted calls for Germany to follow countries like France, Turkey, Japan and Brazil in amending its laws so that consensual sexual relations between adult relatives are no longer illegal. The court also said there was not enough evidence to suggest a possible trend of decriminalisation of such acts.
A four-year-old girl in Britain has been accepted into Mensa after achieving a score of 159 on an IQ test. The Hampshire Chronicle says Heidi Hankins was spotted as being of a “genius level” of intelligence after she taught herself to read, add and subtract and was able to count to 40 at the age of two. Her father, Matthew Hankins, 46, from Winchester, Hampshire, who works as a lecturer at the University of Southampton, said she had shown signs of high development from a very early age.
Sky News reports that a 31-year-old jilted lover crashed her ex-boyfriend’s car into the bowling alley where he worked. A court heard spurned Claire Holley got drunk and ploughed through the glass doors in her ex’s car, causing about €17,000 worth of damage. Her former boyfriend, Davy Jones, the father of one of her two children, had earlier ended the relationship and changed his Facebook status to single. Claire was sentenced to nine months in jail, suspended for two years and banned from the road for 18 months for drink-driving. Holley was also given a two-year community order with a four-month curfew between 8pm and 7am.