Press digest

The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:

The Times reports that Church finances are ‘drying up'. It also says that European Commission officials are due in Malta to consider restoring funds for EU education programmes.

The Malta Independent says a government walkout left the Public Accounts Committee without a quorum yesterday. It also says that the Church is €870,000 in the red.

In-Nazzjon says the economy is growing at the rate of 3.7%, according to EU figures. At the same time, Standard and Poor's has confirmed Malta's credit rating.

l-orizzont says the Church has ended up ‘begging' as funds dry up.

The overseas press

The Wall Street Journal leads with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's plea to European Union leaders to tone down their demands that Beijing appreciates the value of its currency. In a speech in Brussels, he said that if the yuan was not stable there would be job losses and unrest in China and world society would be in turmoil. A weaker currency helps a country's exports by making them less expensive.

Many of today's British nationals lead on Prime Minister David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party conference and his rallying call to Britons to help him pull the country out of economic gloom in the face of job and benefit cuts. The Daily Telegraph says that in what he described as a "call to arms", Mr Cameron repeatedly invoked his vision of the Big Society, claiming that by working together, the nation would share future rewards.

Asia Observer reports that the United States has apologised for the Nato helicopter attack inside Pakistan last week that killed at last two Pakistani soldiers and provoked the fury of the government in Islamabad. The US ambassador to Pakistan said American helicopters had mistaken the soldiers for insurgents.

In a separate development, The Washington Times says the White House has raised serious concerns about Pakistan's ability to tackle growing militancy near the Afghan border. A report suggests the reluctance of the Pakistani military to tackle insurgents is as much a political choice as one based on resources.

The New York Times says the US government has suffered a serious setback in its first attempt to try a Guantanamo Bay detainee in a civilian court. The judge barred the prosecution's main witness from testifying saying he had only been located because of statements the defendant made after CIA interrogation under duress at a secret location. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa, in which 224 people, including a dozen Americans, were killed.

El Universal says the authorities in Ecuador have detained more than 40 police officers in connection with last week's police revolt against President Rafael Correa. He had to be rescued by the army during a violent protest by offices complaining against plans to cut their benefits. The Miami Herald says US federal agents have arrested more than a hundred Puerto Rican law enforcement officials on drugs-related charges after what's been described as the biggest police corruption investigations the FBI had ever mounted.

Michelle Obama, the American First Lady, rose 39 places - and deposed German Chancellor Angela Merkel - in the Forbes 100 list, the rankings compiled by Forbes, the business magazine, which praised her formidable combination of style and political sense. Second on the list was Irene Rosenfeld, the chief executive of Kraft Foods, followed by Oprah Winfrey, Angela Merkel, and Hillary Clinton. France's First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was 35th place in the list; the Queen was 41st.

The UFO world is alive with speculation that China is about to reveal details of startling and detailed 40-minute footage of an unidentified flying object taken during the solar eclipse on July 22. China Today says the footage, appeared to show the object repeatedly changing shape after initially appearing as a glowing blue sphere. Scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing said they will spend the next 12 months studying the footage before drawing any conclusions.

The Washington Post quotes a senior researcher at Microsoft suggesting that computers infected with viruses should blocked from the Internet. The proposal is meant to tackle cyber criminals taking over computers and creating networks used, among other things, for sending spam e-mails.

Corriere della Sera says Milan city council has extended the display of a controversial new sculpture - officially titled LOVE but popularly known as The Middle Finger - by Italy's most famous living artist, Maurizio Cattelan. The sculpture will now remain in Piazza Affari, outside the Milan stock exchange until the end of a retrospective of Cattelan's work in the city on 24 October. And now admirers of the artist's work are pressing for the piazza to become its permanent home.