The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.

Times of Malta says the government confirmed it has never before given a multi-million State guarantee, as questions are raised over its assistance to the private consortium selected to build the new power station. In another story, it says many parents are ignorant of their children’s internet use, with only 29 per cent aware they are accessing the web in their bedrooms.

L-Orizzont says Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria are against the establishment of EU migrant quotas.

In-Nazzjon says that a Natura 2000 zone in the area known as Ta Slima in San Lawrenz has been irreparably damaged by a person who wants to build a bird trap.

The Malta Independent says the reopened inquiry into the use of inferior-quality concrete at Mater Dei Hospital should be concluded in a matter of days.

International news

Bayane Al Yaoume reports Libya’s warring factions have been handed a draft proposal for forming a unity government. UN special envoy Bernardino Leon told the delegations in the Moroccan city of Skhirat it was time for the delegations “to take even the most difficult decisions to achieve peace”. Reuters says the representatives of Tobruk and Tripoli were expected to head to Germany for a meeting of European and North African leaders before returning to consult with their political bases and travelling back to Morocco for more talks.

The Israeli government has built and detonated “dirty bombs” containing nuclear material over years of testing. In interviews with Haaretz, researchers were quoted as saying the project consisted of 20 detonations with explosives laced with a radioactive substance. They said the tests were only conducted to see how such an attack by a hostile force would impact the country. The Israeli have never admitted what is widely considered to be an extensive nuclear weapons programme.

Deutsche Welle reports President Obama has used the close of the G7 summit in Germany to deliver his strongest criticism yet of Vladimir Putin, lambasting the Russian president’s isolationist approach as the seven leaders signalled their readiness to tighten sanctions against Russia if the conflict in Ukraine escalates. The leaders of the US, Germany, UK, France, Japan, Canada and Italy presented a united front and condemned Moscow’s intervention in the Ukraine.

Sputnik says Moscow’s reaction was immediate with the Foreign Ministry saying Russia reserved the right “to implement the necessary steps to protect its security and defend national interests”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also referred to the failure by the G7 to invite the Russian president, saying it was “obvious that seven or eight people can not effectively discuss global problems”.

The European Union’s plan to address the Mediterranean migrant crisis and settlement of asylum seekers was “insufficient”, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned yesterday even as he faced a parallel controversy surrounding relocating newcomers within Italy. He told a news conference at the end of the G7 summit, where migrant issues, climate change, and the economy were on the agenda, that one had to acknowledge that the current situation was not working. The European Commission has met with strong resistance to its plan to resettle about 40,000 migrants in all EU member states.

Meanwhile, Ansa says that statistics published by the UNHCR website revealed the number of people who have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year is 1,850 –almost six times higher than the 280 estimate issued for January-May 2014. The estimated number of migrants landing on Italian coasts since the beginning of this year is approximately 54,000. These included 2,600 minors, 1,700 of whom were unaccompanied.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for stability in the country. Sky Turk says that in his first comment after his AKP lost its absolute majority in parliament for the first time in 13 years, he appealed for the results to be assessed “healthily and realistically” by all parties. The liberal pro-Kurdish HDP party has made its first entry into Parliament, garnering an unexpected 13 percent of votes and gaining 80 seats. A record number of 96 women will sit in the pews of the new parliament, 19 more than in the outgoing legislature.

The New York Times writes that American intelligence has obtained “useful” information on the structure of the leadership of the Islamic State, its organisation, the security measures and financial transactions, thanks to computers and mobile phones during its Delta Force operation in Syria last month, in which Abu Sayyaf, head of oil smuggling, was killed. It says the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, meets regularly with his emirs, who cannot take with them mobile phones or other electronic devices to avoid detection. Trusted drivers take the emirs to the meeting place. The wives of the leaders, including al Baghdadi’s, play a larger role than previously believed: husbands pass messages to their wives who in turn communicate them to the wives of other leaders so as not to be intercepted.

As law enforcement officers using bloodhounds, helicopters and other tools continued to search for convicted killers 48-year-old Richard Matt and 34-year-old David Sweat, New York governor Andrew Cuomo told NBC’s “Today” show they were investigating whether civilian workers or contractors might have helped the two prisoners. To escape, the two convicts, who are described as “dangerous” used power tools to drill through the prison’s steel walls and pipes.

Belgrade is to erect a monument honouring Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand sparked World War I. Local city official Goran Vesic told state broadcaster RTS that the monument is set to be unveiled by the end of June. Princip was just 19 when he shot the archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, setting off a chain of events that sucked Europe’s great powers into four years of unprecedented violence that redrew the world map.

China Daily says Chinese university officials are deploying drones or high-tech radio surveillance trucks at schools across the country to try and catch students cheating on entrance exams. Nearly 10 million Chinese students sat the annual make-or-break university entrance exams yesterday. The exam is the only method used to gain entry to the nation’s universities, which for poorer children can mean the difference between a white-collar office job and a life as a labourer.

Manchester Evening News quotes University of Oxford Cardiologist Professor Peter Sleight saying listening to music could be a treatment for heart conditions. Sleight, who will be presenting the findings of more than 20 years of research at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) conference in Manchester, said scientists had found listening to a repeated 10-second rhythm found in various music compositions – particularly by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi –coincided exactly with changes in blood pressure that reduced the heart rate.