The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times says the police are to file charges on a solar panel fund scam. The fund was partly financed by the EU. It also quotes the prime minister saying BWSC has accepted responsibility for the power station damages.
The Malta Independent leads with the statements made by the political leaders yesterday. It also says that the PN will use the departure of Tonio Borg to renew the leadership.
In-Nazzjon quotes the prime minister saying the people knew where they stood with the Nationalist Party.
l-orizzont says there are questions over why the whole power station extension has been stopped because of damage to a turbine. It also says that John Dalli is investigating the methods used to investigate him. In another story, the newspaper says that the prime minister and the leader of the opposition contradicted each others. The prime minister said BWSC will pay damages while the minister of finance a day earlier said the case may go to court.
The overseas press
Demonstrators have stormed the offices of a private Libyan television station in Benghazi, protesting coverage of the clashes in Bani Walid – one of the last bastions of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. An AFP journalist witnessed demonstrators breaking into the offices of Libya’s Al-Hurra station, wrecking the site and setting fire to an office. The channel stopped broadcasting shortly afterwards. Sunday's protest also came after a day after clashes between pro-government forces and fighters at Bani Walid, which killed at least 26 people and wounded more than 200, according to an AFP tally.
El Pais reports exit polls showed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party has retained its majority in a key election in his home region of Galicia. However nationalist parties came out ahead in the Basque Country.
According to Stuttgarter Zeitung, voters in Stuttgart have elected the environmentalist Greens' candidate Fritz Kuhn as mayor, with Chancellor Angela Merkel's party losing power there for the first time in almost four decades. Kuhn, who will be the centre-left party's first mayor in a German state capital, received 52.9 per cent of the vote and Sebastian Turner, an independent candidate running for Merkel's centre-right bloc, secured 45.3 per cent.
Gramma quotes former Venezuelan vice-president Elias Jaua saying he had met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro for five hours and showed reporters photos of the encounter. The meeting was designed to quash recent persistent rumours that the 86-year-old was on his deathbed. Castro has not appeared in public since March, when he was shown greeting Pope Benedict.
Al Manar TV showed newsreels of clashes which erupted in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Sunday as protesters tried to storm Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s offices. The unrest came after thousands gathered for the funeral of security head Wissam al-Hassan, who was killed by a car bomb Friday. France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France 24 that it was likely that the bomb attack that killed eight people including a top security official in Beirut on Friday was “an extension of the Syrian tragedy.”
Meanwhile, al bawaba reports that at least 13 people were killed after a car bomb exploded in Damascus on Sunday, as UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met with President Bashar al-Assad to discuss a ceasefire during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. The bomb exploded outside a police station in a Christian quarter of the Old City
Al Rai quotes Jordanian authorities announcing they had arrested 11 suspected al Qaeda-linked militants for allegedly planning to carry out a series of attacks targeting shopping centres and Western diplomatic missions in the country. State news agency Petra said they had brought arms into Jordan from neighbouring Syria to use in the alleged plot.
A man accused of killing three people and wounding four others at a US day spa had slashed his wife's tyres two weeks before the shooting. Chicago Tribune quotes the police saying the man's wife was an employee at the Wisconsin spa. The suspect, Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, was found dead inside the spa of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities said he had a four-year restraining order against him.
Unfolding claims of sexual abuse against late BBC star Jimmy Savile have plunged Britain's national broadcaster into its biggest crisis for 50 years, a senior reporter has warned. The Independent quotes veteran BBC foreign editor John Simpson telling investigative show Panorama in an interview to be aired this evening that the scandal had left the broadcaster in a "very dangerous" position. The BBC is fending off reports that it pulled an investigation into Savile's behaviour because it would have clashed with tribute programmes to the entertainer, who died last year aged 84.
ABC announces the death of George McGovern, a staunch liberal and US senator for South Dakota from 1963 to 1981. He was 90. An opponent to the Vietnam War, McGovern suffered a crushing defeat against Richard Nixon during the 1972 presidential election.
Bloomberg reports the US death toll from fungal meningitis linked to potentially contaminated steroid injections has risen by two to 23, with North Carolina reporting its first death. States reported 13 new cases of fungal meningitis, raising the total to 285.
Metro quotes the results of a survey showing that 75 per cent of British people cannot name the largest organ in the body – the skin – while 47 per cent admitted to wrongly self-diagnosing an illness. The survey commissioned to coincide with the release of the eighth series of medical drama “House” on DVD, also revealed 58 per cent prefer to check the internet about symptoms before consulting a doctor and one in 10 turn to television shows to self-diagnose medical conditions.
Health professionals in Ireland have once again warned about the dangers of buying drugs online, after a teenage girl had to have her colon removed in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital. According to reports in the Irish Independent, the 18-year-old developed a life-threatening condition after she took Botanical Soft Gel, a herbal diet pill bought online which caused the blood vessels in her intestines to swell severely.