The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports how Prime Minister Joseph Muscat yesterday praised Cyrus Engerer as a ‘soldier of steel’.
The Malta Independent says Engerer’s withdrawal from the elections means €150,000 need to be spent for reprinting of ballot papers.
In-Nazzjon reports that Joseph Muscat has defended Cyrus Engerer.
l-orizzont reveals a report on the socio-economic situation in Gozo, which it says the former government kept hidden. It shows no alarming situation compared to other islands.
The overseas press
The New York Times reports the UN Security Council has expressed “profound outrage” at the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria last month by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
Intelligence sources have told Sky News they believe they know where some of the schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria are. The sources believe they have been split into at least four different groups, complicating the search to find the girls.
Meanwhile, The Times says Amnesty International has accused Nigerian security forces of having prior knowledge of Boko Haram’s raid on the school in Chibok. According to various witness reports gathered and independently confirmed by the international organisation, armed forces in Maiduguri were alerted to Boko Haram’s imminent attack more than four hours before the plans were carried out.
Clarin quotes Roman Catholic bishops on Argentina saying that their country was “sick with violence and corruption”. They compared it to a “cancer causing injustice and death”, adding that violence was getting more ferocious than ever but they cautioned against vigilantes.
Le Monde reports European Union has strongly condemned President Putin’s visit to Crimea – his first since Russia annexed the territory from Ukraine.
Kyiv Post says the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has strongly condemned Friday’s violence in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in the Donetsk Region, which left more than 40 pro-Russian activists dead.
La Nazione quotes Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi saying Italy would work during its six-month EU presidency to steer the union away from austerity so that “jobs and growth become founding values, not just (fiscal) discipline”.
Oscar Pistorius has sold the upmarket Pretoria home where he shot dead his girlfriend, as legal fees mounted from his lengthy murder trial. The Paralympian’s estate agent Ansie Louw told AFP she now had a buyer for the $480,000-plus house.
The Daily Telegraph says a jury in the trial of Rolf Harris on indecent assault charges was told he has a “dark side” which led him to groom young girls for sexual abuse. Harris has also made the top of the Sun, which reports that the entertainer wrote a letter to the father of one of his alleged victims saying he was “sickened” with himself over his behaviour towards one of the girls.
El Pais reports five footballers between the ages of 12 and 15 years have died in a crash between their bus and a bulldozer in the western Spanish autonomous community of Extremadura.
Ekstra Bladet says a Austria’s bearded drag queen, who was initially written off as too provocative for some socially-conservative countries, was now the favourite to win tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. Since the first votes were cast in 1956, Eurovision results have been closely intertwined with politics and the 2014 competition is no exception.