The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports how a motorsport event at Montekristo Estate was blocked by Mepa. The event is being held elsewhere.
The Malta Independent leads with reactions to its revamped portal.
In-Nazzjon quotes Simon Busuttil saying the PN is updating its education policy.
l-orizzont reports on the government’s €2m investment in new MRI equipment.
The overseas press
The BBC reports world and religious leaders, politicians and organisations have been reacting to video released by the Islamic State (IS) militant group, purporting to show the beheading of British hostage Alan Henning. The apparent killing of the Salford taxi driver, who had been delivering aid to Syria when he was kidnapped, has drawn widespread condemnation. At the end of the video, the militant beheading Henning said former US soldier Peter Edward Kassig would be the next victim.
Meanwhile, in an interview on Radio Free Iraq, the secretary-general of the Peshmerga Ministry of Iraq’s Kurdish region, General Jabbar Yawar, said the international coalition’s air strikes would not be sufficient to free areas under Islamic State (IS) control. He advocated larger forces on the ground in addition to the Peshmerga.
Gazete Oku reports IS militants heavily shelled Kobani, a Kurdish town on Syria’s border with Turkey, as jihadi fighters prepared an all-out offensive for the strategic site. Its capture would provide a direct link between areas under their control in Aleppo and their stronghold in Raqqa to the east.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has reiterated the European Union was in urgent need of change because it was facing a period of danger posed by outdated rules and outsized bureaucracies. In an interview with CNN, Renzi said that EU rules such as a budget limit of three per cent deficit-to-gross GDP was “a parameter of the past” although Italy would stick to the rules as they now stand.
Expressen reports Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has said Sweden’s new centre-left government will recognize the state of Palestine. The move would make it the first major European country to take the step. The UN approved the de facto recognition of Palestine in 2012 but the European Union and most EU member states have yet to give official recognition.
AFP reports Hong Kong police have arrested 19 people after a series of attacks on pro-democracy protesters, with at least eight of those detained believed to have triad backgrounds.
After days of peaceful demonstrations, ugly scenes broke out on Friday at protest camps, leaving 12 people, including six police officials, injured. Several women said they had been sexually assaulted.
Avvenire says Pope Francis used Twitter on Friday to set the tone for the two-week extraordinary session of the synod of bishops on the family that starts on Sunday. “Happy families are essential for the Church and for society,” Francis said via the papal Twitter account, @Pontifex. The synod, which will focus on “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation”, is part of the process of providing the pope with proposals for new guidelines for the Catholic Church on family-related issues.
Bloomberg says official US data showed248,000 net new jobs had been created in September. Together with upward revisions to the previous month’s figures, that was enough to send the jobless rate down from 6.1 per cent to a six-year low of 5.9 per cent.
LBC reports the parents of missing Maddy McCann have won £55,000 in libel damages from The Sunday Times over a story which suggested that they had kept evidence from authorities investigating their daughter’s disappearance. Kate and Gerry McCann said they would be giving the award to two charities.
Sweden Globe says in a medical first, a 36-year-old woman in Sweden has given birth after receiving a womb transplant. The doctor who performed the pioneering procedure said her baby boy was born prematurely but healthy last month. Both mother and child were now at home and doing well.
Time Magazine reports a new genetic history of HIV shows how the pandemic almost certainly took root in the 1920s in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Assisted by train transport and the sex trade, the AIDS virus then spread across the continent and eventually the world. It has since infected some 75 million people and killed 36 million of them.
TG Com reports a Tuscan priest who was apparently filmed squeezing the private parts of a detective posing as a parishioner during a purported “exorcism” has been placed under investigation by his diocese. The detective’s meeting with the priest was filmed by the popular candid camera troupe for a programme aired on Italia Uno last Wednesday.