Malta and international press digest

The following are the top stories in the Maltese and international press today. The armed hold-up at the HSBC Balzan branch is the main story on the front pages of the local newspapers as is the government's decision to keep the power surcharge at 50 per cent until next June.

THE TIMES

1 million euros were stolen in a daring mid-day hold-up at HSBC Bank in Balzan yesterday. No one was injured. The bank is offering a Lm25,000 reward for information..

The power surcharge is to remain unchanged until June 2008, Investments Minister Austin Gatt said. He said financial instruments had enabled Enemalta to cushion the impact of recent increases in the international oil price.

IN-NAZZJON

Tourist arrivals set a new October record, rising by 20 per cent.  

L-ORIZZONT

A 'millionaire' hold up: workers and clients held up in HSBC Bank hold-up.

The government borrows another Lm68m.

IL-GENS illum

Church's financial report shows a drop in collections during Mass.

John Dalli says the last three years were difficult for him.

The Pope issues his  second encyclical.

The Press in Britain

The Sun's front page is dominated by a menacing image of protesters in Sudan demanding the execution of Gillian Gibbons after she allowed children to name a teddy bear Mohammed. The Daily Express leads with the same story, reporting that Gillian Gibbons has been moved from prison to a secret location over fears for her safety. The Daily Mail has the same picture of a Sudanese protester brandishing a knife in a threatening gesture against the jailed teacher.

The Daily Telegraph also has a picture from the scene of the Khartoum protests but leads with the news that the British Government was considering lowering the drink-drive limit in a move that could see people legally unfit to drive after just one drink.

The Mirror reports that Portuguese police are to re-interview the "Tapas Seven" - the friends of the Garry and Kate McCann who dined with them in the Algarve on the night four-year-old Madeleine disappeared seven months ago. Their stories "do not add up", the newspaper quotes sources as saying.

The Independent is marking World Aids Day by offering readers a Damien Hirst print at a "bargain price" to help raise £1m - and, the paper says, keep more than 13,000 people alive for another year.

The Guardian has an exclusive article written by David Abrahams - the millionaire businessman at the centre of the Labour donor crisis - in which he used intermediaries out of a desire for "anonymity, not secrecy". The Scotsman claims that the Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander is facing a police probe after it emerged she had written a thank-you note to a businessman for an illegal donation.

The Times reports that the director-general of MI5 has sent a confidential letter to 300 security chiefs at banks, accountants and legal firms warning them that China is engaging in web-based espionage and may be trying to attack their computer systems.

The Financial Times publishes official data that shows inflation in the 13-nation Eurozone has hit three per cent in November year-on-year, marking its highest level in more than six years. The rise, which was more than expected, stemmed from higher food and oil prices.

.. and elsewhere

The Washington Times reports Senator Hillary Clinton's gratitude after a hostage-taking incident at her presidential campaign office in New Hampshire ended peacefully and that her staff and volunteers were safe. A distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest walked into the campaign office on Friday, took hostages and demanded to speak to the candidate, then surrendered after a six-hour standoff.

The Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano gives prominence to Pope Benedict's second encyclical of his pontificate in which he says atheism has led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" known to mankind. In Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope), the Pope also said humanity would not be saved by scientific progress or political revolution, but only in the hope offered by Christianity. "A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope," he said.

Le Monde quotes President Sarkozy shrugging off a warning by Chadian rebels that they would fight French or other foreign troops deployed on the border in eastern Chad. The French are due to lead a European force of 3,500 that would help to protect Darfur refugees in camps inside Chad.

The Jerusalem Post reports the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the government must postpone electricity cuts for the Gaza Strip that it wanted to start later today in retaliation for continued Palestinian rocket attacks. However, the Court allowed it to carry on cutting fuel supplies to the area.

Belgrade's Blic says 21 people, including tax and trade staff, were charged with corruption over a $1.7 million scam. The Serbian prosecutor of organised crime claimed that the officials sold diesel, imported from Greece for industrial use at a lower tax rate, to filling stations.

De Standaard of Belgium reports Spain has finally backed the industrial plan for the European Union's Galileo project, the satellite navigation system, establishing full EU support for the project. Spain had sought assurances that it would get a ground control centre.

Aftenposten says an Oslo court has dismissed assault claims from an 82-year-old woman against a man of 29 - because she attacked him first in a parking dispute. She told him that she hoped his grandmother would die and slapped him twice, before he grabbed her arm.

Il Giornale di Sicilia gives space to the arrest of Michele Catalano, Mafia boss of Palermo, while watching a hit TV serial on the career of don Salvatore Riina. He was nabbed in his girlfriend's flat after escaping a recent round-up that caught Riina's Palermo heir Salvatore Lo Piccolo. Catalano, 48, didn't put up a fight.

The Seattle Times reports the death of Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s. He was 69. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.