The i reports that French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault yesterday said that France still wants to host a peace conference for Israeli and Palestinian leaders before the end of the year. Ayrault was speaking on the sidelines of the United Nations’ (UN) General Assembly. Israeli leaders have expressed concern that the French initiative, which has so far involved international leaders but no Israeli or Palestinian representatives, will allow the Palestinians to avoid bilateral talks. The report also notes that Russian officials have said recently that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet “in principle” in Moscow.

The Times and Guardian cover US President Barack Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday, his last in office. The speech highlighted what he regards as his major foreign policy achievements, including last year’s nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany).

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Times and Guardian also report that Prime Minister Theresa May met Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. May apparently raised concerns over the continued imprisonment of joint UK-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is thought to have recently been sentenced to five years in prison for alleged spying, was arrested leaving the country with her infant daughter after a family visit.

The Guardian online reports that a permanent US resident has been handed a ten-year sentence in Iran also following allegations of spying.

The Daily Mail includes a report that thousands of British citizens, including pensioners, have lost millions of pounds due to the “secret fraud” of the binary options industry. In particular, it focuses on one company, Inside Option, which is registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines, but operates from a call centre in Israel.

A separate, brief item in the Daily Mail says that the author Julie Burchill has had her application for Israeli citizenship turned down.

In the Israeli media, the top story in Yediot Ahronot, Maariv and Haaretz is US President Barack Obama’s address to the UN General Assembly yesterday. Although it did not constitute the main thrust of his speech, Obama called on the Palestinians to end incitement and to recognise Israel’s legitimacy, while he also said that Israel cannot continue with a permanent occupation. Israel Hayom also covers Obama’s speech, placing it in the context of his meeting today with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.

Yediot Ahronot suggests that Obama is readying to launch a new peace initiative before he leaves office in January. However, Israel Radio news says that US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told journalists in New York that no such development is to be expected.

Yediot Ahronot also contains a report on comments made by Minister Tzachi Hanegbi to a conference of donor countries to the Palestinian Authority (PA). He outlined a number of projects that Israel has already sponsored to improve Palestinian standards of living, such as agreement over electricity supply and water and gas connections. The report says that Hanegbi’s presence at the conference and the substance of his speech “reflects a change in the Netanyahu government’‎s position… Israel has decided to be generous and has agreed to projects that it opposed in the past”.

Meanwhile, a major item in Haaretz is a story which says that teenagers from the Ethiopian community are three times more likely to be sent to prison than other Israeli teens.