The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times says the Mediterranean Conference Centre has been awarded €6.7m in damages after a fire 25 years ago. Half will be paid by the organisers of a car launch show and the providers of laser equipment while the rest will be borne by the government.
The Malta Independent gives prominence to the fact that Franco Debono will not seek re-election. It also says that Labour will split the environment and planning functions of Mepa.
In-Nazzjon says the PN will field 70 election candidates, who, it says, will guarantee a leap of quality.
l-orizzont says Labour is promising real reform at Mepa.
The overseas press
Al Jazeera reports the Syrian government has confirmed Israeli jets have carried out an air strike on its territory, but denied reports that lorries carrying weapons bound for Lebanon were hit. It said in a statement that the target was a military research centre northwest of Damascus, adding that two people were killed and five injured in the attack. The BBC quotes Lebanese security sources, Western diplomats and Syrian rebels saying an arms convoy was hit near Lebanon's border. The attack came as Israel voiced fears that Syrian missiles and chemical weapons could fall into the hands of militants such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. Israel and the US have declined to comment on the incident.
Greece will pay back the billions of euros of European aid it has received to fight its debt crisis, the head of the country's central bank told Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung. George Provopoulos told the paper he understood the concern of European taxpayers but insisted that confidence was returning to the country. The EU and IMF have committed a total of €240 billion in rescue loans to Greece since 2010. In return they insisted on a tough austerity programme to get the country's finance in order.
The European Union has frozen about €890 million in aid earmarked for building Polish roads because of a suspected fraud by contractors. The Irish Times says the Commission acted after Poland launched a criminal investigation into allegations there was a price-fixing cartel involving companies bidding for road-building contracts. Eleven people have been charged, including construction firm executives and one former director at the state road agency. They could face up to three years in jail on charges of colluding to divide three road building contracts among their companies.
ABC reports Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has told Australians to "relax" after giving them eight months' notice of elections, insisting they would not be put through a marathon, bitter campaign. Gillard made the shock announcement on Wednesday that national elections would be held on September 14, breaking from the tradition of revealing the date only a few weeks in advance. She said it would force the conservative opposition led by Tony Abbott to reveal its polices and costings so the vote would be one "not of fevered campaigning, but of cool and reasoned deliberation".
CBS News reports two people were killed when a tree crashed through the mobile home roof, and nine were hospitalised for minor injuries during a massive storm system that raked the American southeast, generating tornadoes and dangerous winds that flipped cars on a major Georgia interstate, demolished homes and businesses and killed. Authorities were working to rescue people reportedly trapped in homes and buildings.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Algeria, has said the two countries have agreed to form a new partnership to combat the threat posed by Islamist militants across north Africa. Cameron’s visit came two weeks after 37 foreign hostages were killed by militants at a gas plant in the Algerian desert. Sky News quotes Cameron pledging to do "everything we can do to combat terrorism" in the wake of the hostage crisis.
The French military in Mali says French-led forces have secured the northern town of Kidal – the last main stronghold of Islamist rebels in the region. The fighters, linked to Al Qaeda, are now believed to be hiding in the surrounding mountains. Meanwhile, experts associated with the conservation of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts, has told France 24 that the bulk were “safe and sound”. Islamist rebels had destroyed some of the historic texts, some datuing back to the 12th century, following the Malian city’s 10-month occupation.
Le Monde announces that the mayor of the world-famous Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy has been handed a six-month suspended sentence and fined €30,000 for positioning a bus stop so that millions of tourists would pass by his shops and restaurants. Mont Saint-Michel is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world. Eric Vannier, who has been mayor of the historic district since 1983 – save for between 2001 and 2008 – owns around 80 per cent of the businesses on the mount and 20 per cent on the adjoining coast, earning him some €29 million a year.
Der Spiegel reports a German transplant scandal has led to a 40 per cent drop in organ donation. Some 150 doctors have been accused of falsifying medical records in the hope of pushing their patients to the top of the transplant list. Meanwhile, 12,000 people in Germany continue to wait for organs – and they won’t all survive. State prosecutors in Bavaria and Lower Saxony are working together to investigate the cases surrounding a 45-year-old doctor fraudulently manipulating dozens of his patients' test results, as the fierce public debate about medical ethics continues.
El Universal says people hurting animals in Mexico City face a fine and up to four years’ imprisonment as a result of new legislation coming into force today. The revised version of the capital’s criminal code protects wild and domestic animals maltreatment.
A three-year-old boy who can count to 200 and name every country in the world has become one of the youngest members of Mensa. The Irish Independent says Sherwyn Sarabi, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, is ranked among the top one per cent of cleverest people in the world after tests revealed he had an IQ of 136. His mother said Sherwyn, who has a reading age of six, began speaking at the age of 10 months and was talking in sentences at 20 months. By the age of two, he could read, count to 200, recognise and name countries, flags, planets in the solar system, parts of the body and internal organs.