The following are the top stories in the local and international press today:
The Times leads with a report on research carried out by the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, GRTU which shows that the people were being more careful with their money with shop owners experiencing a 25 to 30 per cent drop in sales. In another story, the newspaper reports that 50-year-old headmaster Francis Xerri, who had had acid thrown at him a few weeks ago, was partially blinded.
The Malta Independent reports the arrival of the AH1N1 vaccine and the death of a man from the virus.
Malta AH1N1 fourth death was also reported by In-Nazzjon, which in another story says that Mater Dei has been accredited a learning hospital by the European Society of Anaesthesia.
l-Orizzont reports on the post Christmas sales saying that while some shops were doing well, others remained empty.
The international press:
The Washington Times reports Barack Obama vowed to track down everyone responsible in plotting an attempted terrorist attack on an American airliner on Christmas Day. Speaking from Hawaii, the US President also said he was committed to the broader fight against terror groups across parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal says a branch of al Qaeda has claimed it was behind the attempted bombing of a passenger jet bound for Detroit. It quotes an al-Qaeda statement saying that a “technical fault” had caused the failure of the bomb to detonate, but the act “dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is”. Officials say Abdulmutallab met with al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, where he acquired the bomb and was taught how to use it.
In Nigeria, The Guardian quotes a statement by the parents of the 23-year-old Nigerian saying he had broken off contact with them only a few months before the attack. The father, a prominent banker from Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated north, contacted state security officials and later the US Embassy in the hope that someone would bring his missing son home.
London’s The Guardian says China faced huge condemnation over its human rights record after refusing to grant a reprieve from the death penalty for a British man convicted of drug smuggling whose relatives say is mentally unstable and was unwittingly lured into the crime from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace. Akmal Shaikh, 53, would be the first European citizen to be executed in China in half a century.
The official Chinese Xinhua News Agency says a hijacked Chinese cargo ship and 25 sailors have been rescued, two months after they were seized by pirates off the lawless Somali coast. It said the ship and crew were now under the protection of a Chinese naval fleet, but did not say if the ship was retaken by force or if a ransom was paid.
Haaretz reports that the Israeli housing ministry has invited contractors to bid for the construction nearly 700 new apartments in East Jerusalem. Palestinians say such construction impedes peacemaking efforts. But Israel claims all of the city is its capital and does not consider those neighbourhoods to be settlements.
In an interview with Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti, the first given to Serbian media in 13 years, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has said Bosnia's 1992-1995 war could have been avoided. He blamed Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic and foreign powers for triggering the conflict that killed at least 100,000 people. Karadzic is on trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.
A total 550 opposition protesters were detained in Tehran's notorious Evin prison after being arrested in the capital during clashes with security forces on Sunday, the opposition human rights news agency Hrana reports. Iranian police said around 300 people had been arrested in Sunday's clashes across Iran but denied involvement in the killings of demonstrators on Sunday during anti-government protests across the country.
Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, the editor of a newspaper Kalemeh, which is close to Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, was among a number of key government opponents reportedly arrested in Tehran yesterday. According to the Rah-e Sabz opposition website, those arrested include senior aides to Mousavi, whose nephew Seyed Ali Mousavi was among those killed. An opposition website, Norooz, said the Mousavi family claimed the body had been taken by government agents to stop his funeral becoming a focus for fresh protests. Foreign media face severe restrictions in Iran, so reports cannot be verified.
Dawn says riots erupted in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Monday when a suicide attack killed at least 30 people and injured another 60 during a Shia Muslim procession to mark the Ashura festival. It was the third and largest attack on a Shia congregation in Pakistan in the past three days. Immediately after the explosion, marchers turned their anger on security forces and emergency workers.
Abrar reports that the Iranian government has barred single women from working for a state firm that operates a huge gas field and petrochemical plants on the shores of the Gulf. Some 18 months ago, Iranian newspapers carried an instruction by the company requiring that "single employees start creating a family".
In the UK, The Sun reports that a devoted son died as he made his annual Christmas Day pilgrimage to his mother's grave – after slipping on a patch of ice at the cemetery in Manchester. Builder Jimmy Halpin, 54, suffered fatal head and neck injuries. Just weeks earlier Halpin had lost his wife Ann, 55, after she lost a battle against stomach cancer.
The New York Times says a nursing home would have to pay $19 million (€13.2 million) in damages to the family of a 76-year-old patient neglected so badly that he left with more than 20 bedsores. Lawyers said the massive award, handed down by a jury earlier this month, is the first in New York against a nursing home that includes punitive damages.