The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times says there were just 14 convictions for speeding at sea in two years. 51 defendants were acquitted.
The Malta Independent features a Eurostat survey report that 60% see themselves as both Maltese and European.
l-orizzont says ID card renewal plans have failed and many ID cards will be expired when the elections are held.
In-Nazzjon leads with the prime minister’s speech yesterday on building a new Europe based on values.
The overseas press:
President Barack Obama has warned Americans they faced the clearest election choice in a generation, and dispensed the hard truth that solving the country's ills would take years. VOA reports Obama formally accepted the Democratic nomination for president by calling for unity in a crusade to create jobs in manufacturing, energy and education and to slash the deficit. The president also laid out specific goals for the US economy, calling for one million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016, doubling exports by the end of 2014 and cutting net oil imports in half by 2020. He also pledged to cut the nation's deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years. He told Americans he rescued them from a second Great Depression, blamed the Republicans for leaving him a legacy of debt and recession, and warned Republican challenger Mitt Romney's policies would risk repeating the disaster.
Vladimir Putin has said Russia could work with Mitt Romney if he was elected US president – even though the Republican candidate has called Russia the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe”. In an interview broadcast by the Kremlin-funded Russia Today TV, the Russian president said his government would work with whichever president was elected but their effort would be only as efficient as their partners would want it to be.” Putin expressed concern about how a Romney presidency would affect the long-running dispute over US-led Nato plans to place elements of a missile defence system in Europe.
Bloomberg says stock markets in Asia, Europe and the United States rose sharply in response to a plan announced by the European Central Bank to resolve the debt crisis in the eurozone. The new plan enables the bank to buy bonds from countries like Spain and Italy which face unsustainably-high borrowing costs.
Duna TV reports Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has rejected the conditions attached by the IMF and the EU to a new €15 million loan. These include pension cuts and a withdrawal of a controversial tax on banks.
Ethnos says Greek police officers, opposing salary cuts to be included in a new €11.5billion austerity package, defied their own colleagues in the riot force and blocked the entrance to a station, preventing buses used for transporting riot police from leaving the site. The buses were scheduled to travel to the northern city of Thessaloniki, where weekend anti-austerity demonstrations are planned.
Deutsche Welle reports the world’s fourth largest airline, Lufthansa, has cancelled more than 1,000 flights as a strike by cabin crew got underway. Workers at six major German airports have walked out for 24 hours in a dispute over pay – the third industrial action in eight days.
Hurriyet reports that at least 58 refugees, mostly from Iraq and Syria, have drowned after their boat sank close to the coast of Turkey. About half of the dead appear to be children. Survivors said they had been promised passage to the EU, with Britain being the final destination. The captain of the boat and a sailor were reported to have been arrested.
Copenhagen Post quotes a report showing European greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.5 per cent in 2011 over 2010, as a mild winter and increase in renewable energy use offset a rise in coal consumption and economic activity. The European Environment Agency said that in 2010, emissions by the 27 EU-member states rose by 2.4 per cent compared to 2009 levels. The EU-27 do not have a joint target under Kyoto, but they have promised unilaterally to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
France 24 quotes French President François Holland saying everything would be done to catch the killers of four people murdered at a holiday spot in the Alps. All British nationals splash details how three bodies dead were found in a British-registered BMW and a four-year-old girl was found alive underneath the bodies some eight hours after the massacre. Another seven-year-old girl, thought to be her sister, was found violently beaten and is in a coma, fighting for her life. Public prosecutor Eric Maillaud described the attack as an act of "gross savagery".
The Irish Independent reports that the police were examining reports arising out of audits of safeguarding practices in four dioceses, and three religious congregations. The audits examined more than 330 allegations of abuse against 146 priests and religious. The police’s Sexual Crime Management Unit was now looking at those reports to see what further action may be necessary.
USA Today announces that Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, would be buried at sea. Armstrong died on August 25, following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. He was 82.
Huffington Post says a Chinese family helped their quadruplets' teachers by shaving numbers one to four into their children’s hair. The parents, who live in Shenzhen, Southern China, created the identifiers to make things easier for the teachers to tell their four sons apart on the first day back at school. Some have criticised the family's tactics as cruel but others thought it would be a valuable exercise to at least help other children to be able to count up to four.