The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports that yesterday’s historic vote in parliament ushered in divorce. It also says that the deputy mayor of Sliema, Cyrus Engerer, is facing porn and computer misuse charges.
The Malta Independent says 52 yes votes carried the divorce law through yesterday.
In-Nazzjon says the approval of the divorce bill meant that a promise by the prime minister to respect the will of the people had been respected.
l-orizzont says businessmen are being fined because of wrong advice by the GRTU on packaging waste
The overseas press:
NRK television shows footage of torchlight processions which have been held across Norway in a vigil for the 76 victims of last weekend’s twin attacks. Many held white and red roses to mark the worst violence in the country since the Nazi occupation in WWII. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg addressed a crowd of 150,000 in Oslo, saying, "Evil can kill a person but it cannot kill a people."
Aftenposten says the police were investigating the possibility of a wider plot after the man accused of carrying out the attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, told the court he was part of a network. Breivik has been accused of killing at least 68 people on the island of Utoya, where hundreds of youths gathered for a Labour Party summer camp. He went there after allegedly bombing a government building in Oslo, killing eight people. The court ordered that Breivik be held in isolation for eight weeks. The suspect’s father, a retired diplomat told reporters in France that he felt ashamed and wished his son had killed himself instead.
CNN quotes President Obama telling the American people that failure to resolve the country’s debt crisis would damage the economy. American political leaders have been unable to agree a deal so far. Unless they do so in a week’s time, the US would be unable to pay its debts.
Voice of America says the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Republican John Boehner, speaking immediately after the president, accused Obama of wanting a blank cheque to impose new taxes. He said the government was spending more money than it was taking in.
The Times reports that Britain has joined France in suggesting that the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could stay in his country if he relinquished his power. British Foreign Secretary William Hague aid his preference was for Gaddafi to leave Libya but it was up to the Libyan people to decide.
Al Arabiya says the Libyan government showed foreign journalists on Monday a destroyed flu clinic and food warehouses it said had been hit earlier in the day by NATO airstrikes, killing eight people. The attacks took place in the government-held town of Zlitan, 140 kilometers east of the capital Tripoli and not far from the country's front line where rebels are battling Gaddafi's forces. NATO denied, however, that it had targeted civilians and said it had only hit a number of military objectives in the area.
The New York Times quotes UN spokesmen saying more than 1,000 children have died of measles since January in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An urgent vaccination programme has so far dealt with more than three million children.
Metro says that a 44-year-old man who had unprotected sex with his partner knowing he had HIV has been jailed for four years in the UK. Nkosinati Mabanda admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm on the woman by infecting her with the HIV virus. His victim discovered Mabanda was HIV positive after finding a text message from his secret fiancée on his mobile phone. The two women began to talk and his fiancée advised the victim to get an HIV test, which she did. The test came back positive and Mabanda was immediately reported to police in April 2009.
Globe & Mail reports that a 50-year-old South African man woke up inside a mortuary and screamed to be let out – scaring away attendants who thought he was a ghost. His family presumed he was dead when they could not wake him and contacted a private morgue. He spent almost 24 hours inside the morgue. The two attendants later returned and called for an ambulance. The man was treated in hospital for dehydration.