The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta says Malta is likely to remain under the EU's excessive deficit procedure.
The Malta Independent quotes the prime minister saying the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk will eventually be replaced by a gas pipeline once EU funds are sourced.
In-Nazzjon says the PN is the voice of the people.
l-orizzont carries a big picture of the prime minister and says the past year was a year which benefited the people's pockets. It also says there are divisions within the PN on the choice of Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca as president.
The overseas press
Voice of Vietnam Radio reports investigators are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility Malaysia Airlines flight MH307 disintegrated mid-flight. The theory came as a Vietnamese search team found floating debris, which they believe is part of a door and an airplane's tail in the first major breakthrough in the hunt for the missing craft.
New Straits Times quotes Interpol saying the Thai authorities failed to check its lost and stolen database that held information about two stolen passports used to board the flight.
Al Motamar quotes the Yemeni Defence Ministry confirming more than 40 African migrants drowned when their boat sank off the country’s southern coast. A Yemeni naval patrol rescued 30 others.
Kyiv Post reports tens of thousands of people in Ukraine have held rival pro-unity and pro-Russian rallies. In the eastern city of Luhansk, pro-Russian activists seized regional offices forcing the governor to resign and pro-Russia supporters beat up their opponents in Sevastopol, Crimea. A rival pro-Russian demonstration was also staged in the city - the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
On the diplomatic front, the BBC says British and German leaders have telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to urge him to pull back from Crimea. The region is to vote to secede next week. And The Washington Post reports President Obama has invited Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the White House for talks on the crisis.
Megavision says polls have closed in the final round of El Salvador’s presidential election in a tight race between a former left-wing rebel and a conservative candidate who is calling for a tougher approach to violence. With half of the vote counted, Salvador Sanchez Ceren from the governing FMLN party, had a slight lead over his right-wing rival, Norman Quijano.
AFP reports Syrian rebels have freed 13 nuns and three domestic workers kidnapped last year. They nuns have arrived at a town on the border with Lebanon after a nine-hour journey. They appeared exhausted. They had been taken from their convent in the ancient town of Malula last December.
Haaretz says the Israeli military has said it had found 40 rockets with a range of 160 kilometres aboard a ship allegedly transporting arms from Iran to the Gaza Strip. The army said it seized the Panamanian-flagged “Klos-C” last Wednesday and escorted it to the Red Sea port of Eilat where it was inspected on Sunday and unloaded in an operation dubbed “Full Disclosure”.
According to O Globo, hundreds of security forces could be deployed again to a notorious maze of slums in northern Rio, home to a major 2010 police action, after the death of three officers.
Börzen Zeitung reports Britain and Germany will team up to work on developing the next super-fast mobile network, the 5G. The paper quotes British Prime Minister David Cameron telling the opening of the world's biggest high-tech fair that the initiative was one of three areas he wanted Britain and Germany to collaborate in what he dubbed “a world on fast forward”.
MNSBC News quotes New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan saying Pope Francis has expressed his desire for the Catholic Church to “look into” the reasons some states across the US have chosen to favour civil unions for gay individuals. The Pope last week suggested he could be open to such unions for people in “diverse situations of cohabitation”. But, Cardinal Dolan said, the Pope has not disclosed his outright approval of such marriage agreements.