Press digest

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

The Times reports how a judge in sentencing a woman for 12 years for trafficking drugs in prison, also said yesterday that he suspects collusion by the prison authorities.

The Malta Independent says yesterday’s court verdict was a verdict against the prison system as much as against the drug trafficker.

In-Nazzjon leads with the approval yesterday of a stormwater tunnels project to ease flooding in the Zabbar area.

l-orizzont claims that Tonio Borg, then Minister of Home Affairs, had known of the drugs problem in prison before 2008. It also quotes the comments by the judge about Failures in Prison.

The overseas press

The Wall Street Journal reports that the managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has she issued her strongest warning yet about the health of the global economy saying that the world risked sliding into a 1930s-style slump unless countries settle their differences and work together to tackle Europe's deepening debt crisis. Speaking at the State Department in Washington, she said that if the international community failed to co-operate the risk was of "retraction, rising protectionism, isolation". Lagarde said the scale of the eurozone crisis, and its implications for other countries, meant that Europe's governments could not tackle it alone.

Deutsche Welle reports that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged up to €20 billion of Russian investment to bolster the eurozone. Speaking at the close of his final summit with the EU, Medvedev offered his solidarity with the bloc saying Russia was willing to contribute to the rescue plan managed by the IMF for the struggling euro currency. EU states have until Monday to work out the details of a number of bilateral loans to the IMF which are to be used in efforts to stabilise the eurozone.

Meanwhile, Der Spiegel says the Czech Republic and Hungary on Thursday agreed that tight fiscal rules should only apply to euro-zone members. The Prime Ministers of the two countries met on Thursday to discuss the pact and agreed that tax harmonisation would "bring nothing positive, nothing good." All non-euro countries in the EU, except Britain and Denmark, are officially committed to join the euro at some time.

The Financial Times says France took aim at Britain’s triple-A credit rating yesterday and said that it should be downgraded as cross-Channel tensions over the euro increased. The French central bank chief and Prime Minister both broke protocol to say the ratings agencies should target London before Paris.

Al Ayyam reports that hundreds of Palestinians gathered in Bethlehem to light a Christmas tree ahead of the holiday festivities in the town where Jesus was born. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad lit up the decorations on the 50ft tree, along with the lights illuminating the rest of the square outside the Church of the Nativity. Fayyad said Christmas was an opportunity to “celebrate the Palestinian identity of Jesus Christ”.

The New York Times says Russia has surprised western countries by circulating its own draft UN resolution aimed at resolving the crisis in Syria. Western countries have spent months trying to get their own resolution approved but faced a Russian veto. European diplomats said they would negotiate on the text which condemns the violence by both Syria's government and the opposition, but does not mention sanctions.

France 24 reports that a French court has convicted terror leader Carlos the Jackal of organising four deadly attacks in France in the 1980s and sentenced him to life in prison. The Venezuelan-born terrorist is already serving a life sentence in a Paris prison for a triple murder in 1975.

A Dutch minister had a lucky escape when a lamp crashed down from the ceiling of the Parliament chamber and narrowly missed her. NRC Handelsblad says Health Minister Edith Schippers was leading a debate about health care reforms involving the chronically ill and handicapped when the lamp fell. It smashed on a table right beside her. The near miss left her so shaken that the debate was halted temporarily while she regained her composure.

The Associated Press announces that the third smallest baby to be born in the world, Melinda Star Guido, who at birth was so tiny she could fit into the palm of her doctor's hand, is expected to be home by New Year's day. Weighing just 270g when born at 24 weeks in late August, Melinda now weighs 1.8 kilos and is believed to be the second-smallest baby to survive in the US. During her pregnancy, her 22-year-old mother suffered from high blood pressure. Most infants her size don't survive, but yesterday Melinda gripped her month’s pinky finger and yawned.