The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and l-orizzont report that a court has ordered the allocation of two extra seats to the PN following mistakes made in the election counting process. The government is to appeal.
The Malta Independent says Edwin Vassallo and Peter Micallef are in line to be allocated seats in Parliament if the court sentence comes into force.
In-Nazzjon quotes Simon Busuttil saying justice was delivered with yesterday’s court sentence.
The overseas press
London’s The Times reports President Putin has threatened to split the west with a surprise peace plan for Ukraine that drew in France and Germany but left Britain and the United States out of the loop. Angela Merkel and François Hollande rushed to Kiev to try to persuade President Poroshenko to sign up to the terms, which include an immediate ceasefire and the possible deployment of a UN force.
Kathimerini says Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has renewed his determination to do away with austerity measures and accused the ECB of blackmail. In a defiant first speech to parliament after returning from a European tour, he said Athens was no longer open to being told what to do. He said the new Greek government would respect the EU rule for primary balanced budgets, but he made it clear “austerity is neither a rule, nor is it part of the EU’s founding principles”. As Tsipras spoke, some 6,000 people took part in an anti-austerity demonstration in Athens’ central Syntagma Square.
Le Soir reports NATO defence ministers have agreed to more than double the size of the alliance’s Response Force and create a new quick-reaction force of 5,000 troops to meet simultaneous challenges from Russia and Islamic extremists. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the decisions would “ensure that we have the right forces in the right place at the right time”.
According to Ad Dustour, dozens of Jordanian fighter jets have bombed Islamic State training centres and weapons storage sites, intensifying attacks after the militants burned to death a captured Jordanian pilot. Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said that as part of the new campaign, Jordan was also attacking targets in Iraq.
L’Osservatore Romano announces Pope Francis will address a joint session of the US Congress in September – marking the first time the head of the Catholic Church has delivered such a speech. The pontiff, who is also expected to meet President Obama, will speak before members of the Senate and House of Representatives on September 24.
Meanwhile, Avvenire reports that Pope Francis said on Thursday that the Catholic Church must rid itself of the “scourge” of child sexual abuse and he asked for “help” in making sure predator priests were a thing of the past. In a letter sent ahead of the first meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the pope said families must know their children were safe within the Church.
Global debt has far outpaced economic growth since 2007, when the global credit bubble burst, causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As a result, the world is more burdened by debt today than it was eight years ago.
Global debt has increased by $57 trillion since 2007 to almost $200 trillion, the Financial Times reports, quoting a sobering report by McKinsey Global Institute. As a share of gross domestic product, debt has risen from 270 to 286 per cent. While almost half of the increase in global debt since 2007 was in developing economies, a third was the result of higher government debt levels in advanced economies. The report also calls for “fresh approaches” to preventing future debt crises.
Los Angeles Times announces the resignation of Amy Pascal as co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and head of the film studio, three months after a massive hack hit the company and revealed embarrassing emails. Pascal was one of the most powerful women in Hollywood and the force behind such critical and commercial hits as “The Social Network” and “American Hustle”. Her career with Sony has spanned nearly 20 years.
Mundo News reports a six-year-old girl was eaten by piranhas in Brazil after a canoe she was in with her grandmother and four other children capsized in a storm. Her grandmother managed to bring the other children back into the boat but was not able to reach the victim.
Bobbi Kristina Brown, the 21-year-old daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, is brain dead, the New York Post says. According to the TMZ website, her father has been told it was time to “let her go”. Brown has been in a medically induced coma since Saturday when she was found face down in her bathtub.
The BBC reports Gary Glitter has been found guilty of historical sex abuse against three young girls between 1975 and 1980. The 70-year-old former singer was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under the age of 13. He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on 27 February. He could face up to life imprisonment for the offence of having sex with an underage girl.
Ansa says that after busting a pimping gang of Roma (gypsy) men. Italian police have discovered Roma girls as young as 13 were being sold for sex on the streets of Milan. The price of a girl in her low teens varied from €3,000 to €7,000 and the cost of a piece of turf to pimp her out ranged from €200 to €500 euros.
Groups of ‘serenading’ gondolas gathered under historic palazzi in the lagoon city may become a thing of the past under new water-traffic regulations issued Thursday. La Nuova Venezia reports gondolas must now travel in single file on the left-hand side of canals, with motorised vessels going down the right and overtaking to the left. Craft longer than 3.5 metres will be banned from passing under the Rialto Bridge, where a German tourist died in a collision between a gondola and a vaporetto in 2013.