The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and the Malta Independent report how the prime minister hinted that the new gas power station will not be ready in March. He insisted however that tariffs will still go down by a quarter for businesses.
In-Nazzjon reports that banks and supermarkets, as well as loan sharks, were all defrauded by a Maltese businessman who has since fled the island.
l-orizzont says former port workers and their heirs say they are confident that the government will remedy injustices they suffered in the past.
The overseas press
The BBC quotes UN special envoy on Ebola David Nabarro warning that the world might have to learn to live with the disease for ever unless almost every country is mobilised to fight it. He said the international response needed to be 20 times greater than it was now.
L’Equipe says Morocco says the government has asked for next January’s African Cup of Nations football tournament to be postponed because of the outbreak of Ebola. The Health Ministry wants to avoid events involving countries affected by the outbreak.
Al Bawaba reports Islamic State forces have made further advances in another day of intense fighting in the Syrian town of Kobani. The militants have captured the headquarters of the Kurdish fighters and were closing off the final route out of the town.
Meanwhile, Al Thwarta says the UN envoy to Syria has warned that the remaining civilians in Kobani could be massacred if the town fell.
AFP reports French forces have destroyed an Al Qaeda convoy in northern Niger, which was transporting weapons from Libya to Mali. Armed and several militants have been captured. France has been trying to clear the Sahel of fighters of fighters from Al Qaeda’s North African wing.
O Globo says the governor of the Brazilian state of San Paolo has asked for emergency clearance to siphon the remaining water from the capital’s main reservoir, which has almost run dry. After nine months on unprecedented drought, 95 per cent of the water has gone. The drought has affected other states as well.
According to USA Today, hundreds of protesters have joined the first march of what they say would be “a weekend of demonstrations” in St Louis against police violence. The protest marks the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Afro-American teenager show by a white police officer in the town of Ferguson last August. Tensions have been raised by the death of a second black teenager on Wednesday in what police said was “a shoot-out”.
A vice-president of Equitorial Guinea has been forced to relinquish $30 million of his assets in the United States, which the authorities there say were bought with stolen money. He has to sell his mansion in Malibou, a Ferrari and a collection of six life-size statutes of the singer Michael Jackson.