The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says that according to three Palestinian survivors, many families, including up to 70 children, were among the hundreds of people who perished after their boat was deliberately sunk by smugglers a week ago. In another story, it says a man charged with murdering his father-in-law had assisted a woman who killed her husband 20 years ago.
The Malta Independent reports Nationalist Party deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami speaking at the launch of the party’s Independence Day celebrations yesterday saying he looked forward to the day he fully recovered. In another story it says Alfred Sant, who heads the PL’s delegation in the European Parliament, abstained in the historic vote which ratified the association agreement with Ukraine.
Malta Today reports that the Malta Community Chest Fund is set to become a foundation, allowing the entity to contribute to research on different illnesses. In another story, it says police officers have arrested a young man believed to have shot down one of the white storks that were resting in Malta before continuing on their migratory route.
L-Orizzont says official confirmation is today expected that Prince Harry will be visiting Malta instead of the Duchess of Cambridge for Malta’s Independence celebrations.
In-Nazzjon says everything indicates that a major PL activist will be appointed to a senior position in the management of Gozitan libraries in spite of not having any qualifications in the sector.
International news
Fox News announces President Obama has issued a global call to action to fight West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, warning the deadly outbreak was unprecedented and “spiralling out of control”, threatening hundreds of thousands of people. Speaking as he unveiled a major new US initiative which will see 3,000 US military personnel deployed to West Africa to combat the growing health crisis, Obama said the outbreak was spreading “exponentially”. The virus has killed at least 2,400 people in five West African countries.
The Washington Post reports the White House and the US military have played down a suggestion by the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff that deploying ground forces in Iraq to fight Islamic State jihadists was an option. The White House insisted the idea of US troops in battle was a “purely hypothetical scenario” but Gen. Dempsey said Obama had personally told him to come back on a “case by case basis” if the military situation changed.
Two Al Qaeda branches, one in the Islamic Maghreb and another in the Arabian Peninsula, have announced that they had united with the jihadists of the Islamic State against the “common threat of the US-led coalition”. Al Bawaba says both called on their “brothers” in Iraq and Syria to stop killing each other and to unite against the American campaign and its coalition that threatens them all.
The Scotsman quotes the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Alex Salmond, has appealed to voters not to let the opportunity to create an independent Scotland “slip through their fingers”. In a letter published on the final day of campaigning, he said the referendum offered voter “a unique chance”. Meanwhile, three separate polls have given supporters of the union with Britain a narrow four-point lead: the No campaign with 52 per cent against the Yes’ 48 per cent. As many as one in seven are still undecided.
Kyiv Post reports the Ukrainian Parliament has approved legislation meant to cement the country’s Western orientation while strengthening its truce with pro-Russian separatists in the southeast. One of the votes ratified the association agreement with the European Union. The rejection of the pact by the previous president just before he was scheduled to sign it led to mass demonstrations and his overthrow last February.
Meanwhile, Baltic Times quotes the Ukrainian foreign ministry stating the country’s forces had been attacked 296 times by pro-Russian forces since the September 5 ceasefire agreement, leaving 16 dead and 98 wounded. The ministry added that on September 11, Ukrainian forces were attacked 129 times.
NBC News says NASA is going back to the future with $6.8 billion in backing for Apollo-style spaceships designed by Boeing and SpaceX. Both companies have been given the go-ahead to build, test and fly their gumdrop-shaped “space taxis” with the aim of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station as of 2017. Since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA has had to rely on the Russians for rides to the station, at a cost topping $70 million per seat.
AGI reports FAO has said the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015 was “within reach”. It said the number of hungry people worldwide had declined by more than 100 million over the last decade and by more than 200 million since 1990-92. But the annual report, the “State of Food Insecurity in the World”, also stressed that 805 million people in the world, or one in nine, still suffer from hunger.
Ansa says Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi got a standing ovation as well as opposition jeers while presenting his 1,000-day reform programme. He told the Lower House the sweeping reform package sought to overhaul Italy’s justice system, electoral law, schools, and labour laws in an effort to modernise the country, cut red tape, attract foreign investments, and pull the country out of what is its longest post-war recession. He told the Senate that while his government wanted to reduce the cost of labour, that did not mean it would reduce wages.
Corriere della Sera says a Milan appeals court has ruled in favour of former prime minister and centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi and against his former wife in an alimony dispute case, cutting Veronica Lario’s monthly support payments and ordering her to repay him €36 million. Berlusconi had initially been ordered to pay Lario €3 million a month in alimony, which has now been reduced to a €2 million monthly payment.
The Associated Press quotes a US government study which shows that the number of American men and women with big-bellied, apple-shaped figure – the most dangerous kind of obesity – had climbed at a startling rate over the past decade. People, whose fat has settled mostly around their waistlines instead of in their hips, thighs, buttocks or all over, are known to run a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and other obesity-related ailments.
Le Parisien reports a Vatican was stopped by customs officers as it passed the border control in France and two Italians were arrested after four kilos of cocaine and 150 grams of cannabis were found on board. The Vatican assured French agency I.Media that no employee or member of the Holy See was directly involved and confirmed that two Italians had been arrested in connection with the incident. The car belongs to Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mejia, a former archivist and librarian of the Church.
ABC says one in five Australians believe a woman was “partly responsible” for being raped if she is intoxicated. A national survey conducted by VicHealth has also found one in six people support the notion that when women say no to sex, they mean yes. VicHealth chief executive Jerril Rechter said the results were “shocking” and showed there was still a lot of work to do when it came to changing people's attitudes.