The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports exclusively that the new collective agreement for the Civil Service will cost the government €60m in wage increases for the 30,000 employees over five years.
The Malta Independent reports how a 44-year-old woman was stabbed in Qormi.
In-Nazzjon reports that an e-gaming company is to invest €11m in Malta.
l-orizzont says the death of a woman in Mgarr may have been a murder.
The overseas press
The Washington Times reports the US State Department has announced it was withdrawing more staff from its embassy in Libya and at the same time warned Americans there that demonstrations might take place in Tripoli and Benghazi after Friday prayers, later today. A State Department official said the reduction in staff would be temporary, noting that the security situation in Libya would be reviewed early next week.
Börzen Zeitung says stocks rose and the euro recovered from two-week lows yesterday after the Spanish government said it would cut spending sharply and opened the door for a potential European bailout. The euro, which had lost more than 1.6 per cent over the last two weeks, rose to $1.2912, up 0.3 per cent, after hitting a low of $1.2830 earlier in the day.
According to El Pais, Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced a timetable for economic reforms and a tough 2013 budget focused on spending cuts rather than tax increases as the country continues to negotiate a possible European aid package to ease high borrowing costs. Only old-age pensioners were spared in the slew of cuts,
Deutsche Welle announces that President Joachim Gauck of Germany has signed legislation approving the country's participation in the eurozone's permanent financial bailout fund – the European Stability Mechanism. He had delayed signing the bill due to legal challenges to the legislation. The move came just hours after ambassadors from the 17 countries that make up the eurozone signed a joint declaration that amended the text of the ESM, designed to make it comply with stipulations laid out by Germany's Constitutional Court.
World powers have decided to lay the groundwork for another round of negotiations with Iran over its disputed nuclear programme. The Washington Post reports that neither the US nor any of its international partners was ready to abandon diplomacy in favour of military or other actions, as Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu had advocated. The new hope for negotiated end to Iran’s decade-long nuclear standoff came after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia to persuade Iran to halt its production of material that could be used in nuclear weapons.
Earlier, Netanyahu took the unusual step of showing the UN General Assembly a not-very-complex diagram of a bomb to illustrate the threat of Iran’s nuclear programme. The New York Times says that in his speech to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu spoke of the imminent threat of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. He told delegates that the country would have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon by next summer and said that a “clear red line” must be set for Iran’s nuclear drive.
CBS News reports that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has claimed that more than 305 people were killed in the bloodiest day of Syria's 18-month revolt. It said 199 of the dead were civilians. The UN refugee agency, meanwhile, has warned that as many as 700,000 Syrian refugees could flee the war-torn nation by the end of 2012 as it stepped up calls for emergency funding.
The New American says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has used an address to the United Nations to renew his call for the United States to end its persecution of WikiLeaks. Speaking via a video link from asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Assange also decried the plight of US soldier Bradley Manning who has been held in custody for 856 days. Manning is accused of leaking thousands of military and diplomatic cables, published on the WikiLeaks site.
A man linked to an anti-Islam video that sparked riots across the Muslim world has been held without bond after a hearing in Los Angeles over a probation violation. The Los Angeles Times reports a judge said Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was a flight risk and cited a pattern of deception when making his ruling. In 2010, Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in jail. When released in June 2011, as a condition of his parole he was forbidden from accessing the internet or using aliases without the permission of a probation officer.
ABC Hobart says the Tasmanian Premier and gay rights campaigners have vowed not to give up on same-sex marriage despite a historic bill being defeated in the state's Upper House. After two days of impassioned debate, the bill was voted down on Thursday night eight votes to six.
The Mirror announces the death of actor Herbert Lom. He was 95. Best known for starring as Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther, Lom played the long suffering boss of Peter Sellers bungling Inspector Clouseau in the film series. He also appeared in The LadyKillers, Spartacus and as Napoleon Bonaparte in War and Peace.
CBS News reports an American chef has been convicted of second degree murder after he admitted slow-cooking his wife's body for four days to get rid of the evidence. David Viens, 49, claimed she had died accidentally and he panicked. After cooking her body, he threw the remains in the rubbish. Her body was never found.
The Daily Star leads with the four-match suspension the English Football Association slapped on Chelsea captain John Terry after finding him guilty of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers' Anton Ferdinand last year. Terry was also fined £220,000 (€277,000). In July, Terry was cleared of the charge by the courts.