Press digest

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

The Times says an investigation will be held into a savage attack by bouncers on a 17-year-old in Paceville. It also says the Addolorata cemetery is to be privately managed.

The Malta Independent says the prime minister yesterday referred to e-mails between the leader of the opposition and a journalist and has Dr Muscat accused the PL leader of having encouraged the worker to betray her employer. It also quotes Dr Muscat saying Dr Gonzi is being held hostage by Austin Gatt on SmartCity.

l-orizzont says the Prime Minister is failing to refer to burning issues including the bus service.

In-Nazzjon says Joseph Muscat is hiding the content of e-mails between him and a journalist by focusing on whoever acquired the e-mails.

The overseas press

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the world's seven billionth inhabitant – to be born sometime this afternoon – would come “into a world of contradiction”. In an interview with Time magazine, he said that while there was plenty of food, a billion people went to bed hungry every night. Many people enjoyed luxurious lifestyles, but still many people were impoverished. He insisted Monday's birth should be seen as a "clarion call to action".

The outgoing president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, has warned the eurozone debt crisis was "not over".  In an interview with German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, he urged leaders to implement measures agreed at last week's eurozone summit as quickly as possible, adding that inflation in the region was likely to be "very low" for the next 10 years. Trichet, who steps down after eight years as head of the ECB, would be replaced by the Italian Mario Draghi.

BNT TV says Rosen Plevneliev, the ruling conservative party's candidate in Bulgaria's presidential run-off, declared victory after exit polls indicated he had won handily and his Socialist challenger, Ivaylo Kalfin, conceded defeat. Exit polls gave Plevneliev 54.8 per cent of the vote. Turnout was 42 percent.

The West Australian reports that Commonwealth heads of government meeting ended in Perth yesterday with leaders accused of dodging the issue of human rights and failing to agree on a blueprint for reform. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard conceded talks had been difficult but said the meeting had succeeded in its "broad aims".

Qantas Airways was expected to resume flying later today after an independent tribunal in Australia ordered the airline’s workers to end the strike which led to all the planes being grounded worldwide – stranding tens of thousands of passengers around the world. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told the Australian Broadcasting Corp he had no choice but to order the lockout of union workers and end months of rolling strikes that led to cancelled flights, $70 million in losses and a collapse in future bookings.

The New York Times says that more than three million homes and businesses in the northeastern United States were without power after electricity supplies were knocked down by an unseasonably-early snowstorm. Passengers in a train were trapped for 13 hours by landslides.

Haaretz reports Israeli aircraft attacked Palestinian militants in Gaza for a second day and warned such raids would continue until there was an end to rocket fire from the Palestinian territory. A Palestinian was killed and another wounded in an Israeli air raid on Rafa.

Teheran Times says Iran's parliament is set to summon President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning over an economic scandal after at least 73 lawmakers signed the petition to question him. Earlier the parliament found the economics minister guilty in relation to a $2.6 billion fraud case, involved the use of forged documents to obtain credit from at least two Iranian state banks to purchase state-owned companies.

Egypt’s Daily News says a Cairo court has postponed the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, and former interior minister Habib El-Adly, along with six of his top aides, to December 28 until a decision was made on whether to replace the panel of judges hearing the case. They are on trial for ordering the killing of protesters and other corruption charges. A number of the lawyers representing the victims’ families filed a petition demanding a change of the judges’ panel, claiming that the presiding judge's brother had dealings with some of the defendants.

Reuters reports that items from a huge collection of priceless ancient coins, jewellery and statuettes, looted from a bank vault in eastern Libya in the chaos of the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi, have appeared in the local souk and were being taken abroad. The cache of some 8,000 pieces was taken by thieves who chiselled into a concrete bank vault in Benghazi in the early days of revolutionary tumult after fire spread from an adjacent headquarters of the feared secret police. Despite a police hunt involving Interpol, statues from the vault have surfaced in neighbouring Egypt, and some of the 500 gold coins recently seen there may have been part of the lost trove.

Xinhua news agency reports that more than 12,000 people have been arrested in a nationwide blitz on online drug dealing, dozens of suspected drug rings have been closed and 300 kilos of illegal drugs seized. The Ministry for Public Security said the crackdown followed the discovery of an online video platform that was used to sell drugs and “gather drug addicts” without drawing the attention of the authorities.

Pravda says Russian police have arrested a naked motorist in Moscow after he slammed into 17 vehicles in a drunken rampage. Four of the damaged vehicles were police cars.