The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and Malta Independent lead with the portfolio assigned to Karmenu Vella in the new European Commission.
In-Nazzjon says the government is continuing to collect sensitive information on students while holding a consultation on the subject of data gathering.
l-orizzont says the former government imposed a €5m burden on taxpayers in commitments made for a new theatre within PBS.
The overseas press
President Obama has promised a “relentless military campaign” to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State militants. CNN reports that in a televised address, Obama said that with a new Iraqi government in place, the US would lead a “broad coalition” against IS, which controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry has described the Islamic State militants as “anti-Islam”. Fox News says that while visiting Iraq’s newly-elected prime minister to discuss an international alliance to counter jihadists, Kerry said “in the modern world there is no room for their barbarism and their brutality”.
The Daily Record dedicates its front page to a poll that has given the Scottish ‘No’ campaign a six-point lead: 53 per cent as against 47 per cent for the ‘Yes’.
Le Soir reports EU ambassadors have failed to reach agreement on when the latest economic sanctions against Russia should be implemented. They will meet again today for more talks on the restrictive measures.
AFP says Bosnian police have arrested 11 people, including two regional ministers, over multi-million-euro tax fraud that authorities called one of the most “complex organised criminal cases” in the nation’s history.
Haaretz quotes the Israeli military saying it had opened criminal investigations into two high-profile cases involving Palestinian civilian casualties in this summer’s Gaza war. Observers interpreted the move as an apparent attempt to head off international investigations into its conduct.
A study by the UN has found evidence that the Earth’s protective ozone layer is beginning to repair itself after years of depletion. The New York Times says scientists attribute this mainly because of the phase-out of certain chemicals used in refrigerants and aerosol cans. The ozone layer protects the earth from cancer-causing solar rays,
VOA News reports officials in the Unites States were preparing to charge a father with murdering his five children. Timothy Ray Jones of South Carolina is suspected of killing the children and then dumping their bodies in Alabama.
TMZ announces the death of Richard Kiel, whose towering height and distinctive baritone voice defined his nearly 50-year career in television and films, most notably as the steely toothed James Bond villain “Jaws”. He was 74.
La Gazzetta dello Sport reports Ferrari’s chairman Luca de Montezemolo has resigned under pressure from the CEO of parent company Fiat Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, who took up the reins of the Prancing Horse.