The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times leads with Joe Grima’s resignation after his facebook comments and the private member’s motion moved by Franco Debono on the power station.
The Independent reports how the PL yesterday accused the government of homophobia. It also says that a pilot project aims to reconcile conflicting interests at Ghadira.
l-orizzont highlights PL preparations for its first national congress under the theme – A future which unites us.
In-Nazzjon says that Joseph Muscat yesterday did not condemn Joe Grima for his facebook comments, and Mr Grima did not apologise.
The overseas press
Forbes reports World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has warned that a sharp rise in food prices is threatening the well-being of millions of people around the world, particularly consumers in Africa and the Middle East. The World Bank says food prices increased by 10 per cent in July mainly due to a US heatwave and drought in parts of Eastern Europe. The price of key grains such as corn, wheat and soybean saw the most dramatic increases, described by the World Bank president as "historic".
CNN quotes US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney calling upon disappointed and disaffected Americans to turn President Obama out of office in November, arguing that the president had failed to deliver the hope he promised four years ago. Romney launched his campaign for the White House in a Republican National Convention finale, declaring "what America needs is jobs, lots of jobs" and promising he had a plan to create 12 million of them. The US is struggling with 8.3 per cent unemployment and the slowest economic recovery in decades.
Deutsche Welle says China has assured Europe of its confidence in the eurozone at the start of a two-day visit to Beijing by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said China would "continue to invest in the EU". Shortly after her arrival, China's official news agency Xinhua said China had signed a €2.8 billion order to purchase 50 A320 passenger aircraft from Airbus an agreement to extend the life of an Airbus assembly plant in Tianjin. Other Sino-German agreements signed span the car industry, communications, energy and health.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has said it was in Germany’s interest to consent to extraordinary steps to preserve the euro. He used the pages of German weekly Die Zeit to plead for a more expansive role for the ECB and to say that the crisis-struck currency can be stabilised without sacrificing each country’s independence to a unified European political system. In tactical terms, Draghi sought to neutralise protests made by Germany’s top central banker, Jens Weidmann, against ECB proposals to buy Spanish or Italian bonds on the market in order to bring down their borrowing costs and prevent the debt crisis from spreading.
The Financial Times reveals that under a plan being drawn up by the European Commission, the European Central Bank would be given sweeping authority over all 6,000 eurozone banks. The plan would strip existing national supervisors of almost all authority to shut down or restructure their countries’ failing banks, giving those powers to Frankfurt. The legislation would not be formally unveiled by commission president José Manuel Barroso until September 12. To become law, it must be approved by all 27 EU heads of government. The plan was highlighted again by Commissioner Michel Barnier in comments to Sueddeutsche Zeitung
Abrar quotes Iran's Supreme Leader saying his country is not pursuing nuclear weapons but will not give up its national right for peaceful use of nuclear energy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke to the Non-Aligned Movement's summit meeting in Tehran Thursday, even as the UN's nuclear watchdog publicized new concerns about Iran's controversial nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has more than doubled the production capacity of its uranium enrichment program at a secure underground site known as Fordo.
Lebanon’s Daily Star reports Egypt has called for intervention to halt bloodshed in Syria, telling a meeting of 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement it was their duty to stand against the "oppressive regime" of President Bashar Assad. President Mohamed Mursi said Assad had lost legitimacy in his fight to crush a 17-month-old revolt in which 20,000 people have been killed. His comments prompted Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to storm out of the meeting.
Mail & Guardian reports South African prosecutors have charged 270 miners with the murders of 34 colleagues killed by police during a strike – a decision the former leader of the ruling ANC party youth wing, Julius Malema condemned the decision as "madness". He said none of the policemen involved in the shootings was in custody. Authorities are using an obscure statute called the common purpose law, under which people in a crowd where a crime was committed could be prosecuted as accomplices. The law has not been used in South Africa since apartheid ended almost 20 years ago.
Italy's health minister Renato Balduzzi has told Vatican Radio he was considering appealing a the European Court of Human Rights ruling that struck down part of fertility law that forbids the screening of embryos for disease. The court in Strasbourg said the 2004 law, one of Europe's most restrictive regarding assisted fertility, violated the rights related to family and privacy of an Italian couple who are carriers of cystic fibrosis and wanted to screen their embryos to be sure that any offspring would be free of the debilitating hereditary illness. Critics of the law, supported by the Vatican, claim it is morally corrupt to allow babies to be cherry picked.
Houston Chronicle says jurors have convicted a man of taking part in the repeated sexual assaults on a Texas middle school student and sentenced him to 99 years in prison and fined him $10,000. Prosecutors aid the girl, who was 11 years old at the time, was sexually assaulted on at least five occasions from mid-September through early December of 2010 by 20 men and boys from her town, Cleveland. All six of the juveniles and two of the 14 adults charged in the case pleaded guilty. Eric McGowen was the first defendant to stand trial. He faced a minimum sentence of 25 years prison and a maximum of life.