The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times says the Budget is expected to be presented in the last week of November. Meanwhile, a new deputy leader of the PN is expected by the end of this month.
The Malta Independent says the PN deputy leader vote will take place on November 29. It also focuses on the proposals to the political parties made yesterday by the Malta Employers’ Association.
In-Nazzjon leads with the launching of a new PN billboard which says that Joseph Muscat is surrounded by 'old' faces.
l-orizzont says Malta is moving closer to austerity.
The overseas press
Frankeinstorm Sandy has slammed into the East Coast of the United States, killing at least 10 people, hurling a record-breaking four-metre surge of seawater at New York City and knocking out power to an estimated 5.2 million people. Fox News quotes New York city major, Michael Bloomberg, has said there had been “a record tidal surge” which was higher than forecast. Associated Press reported at least 10 people dead in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – several due to fallen trees. More than 50 million people across 12 states have been affected.
Fox News showed water pouring into road tunnels, the subway and underground car parks. Large parts of the city have been plunged into darkness. Patients have been evacuated from the New York’s University Hospital after it lost power. Elsewhere in the city, the storm left a construction crane bent double next to a skyscraper and caused the facade off a four-storey building to collapse.
President Obama warned earlier that there could be days of disruption to power supplies and transport. He declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Wall Street Journal quotes disaster modellers predicting the cost to the US economy could be as high as $20 billion (€15.5 billion). Trading on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will stay suspended for a second day on Tuesday. The United Nations headquarters in New York has also been closed. In Washington DC, federal government offices were to be closed until Wednesday. Forecasters have said Sandy could linger over as many as 12 states for as long as 36 hours.
Star-Telegram says the US Coast Guard rescued 14 members of a crew forced to abandon a tall ship off the North Carolina coast, but two other crew members went missing; one was found and listed in critical conditional Monday night. The HMS Bounty was originally built for the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, and has been featured in other films, including one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.
Argentina's state-run news agency Telam reports heavy rain in Buenos Aires has claimed the life of an elderly man and caused major damage. More than 1,000 people had to evacuate their homes as 13 cm of rain fell in a few hours. The deluge caused power cuts, flooded subways and train lines and turned streets into rivers.
ABC says a shallow earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 has struck off British Columbia on Canada's west coast – the second powerful earthquake in the region in two days. The US Geological Survey said the quake, at a depth of about 10 kilometres, was centred about 245 kilometres southwest of Prince Rupert.
According to France 24, 22 non-governmental organisations active in the Palestinian territories have accused the European Union of propping up Israeli settler policy by doing booming business with settlements even though it views them as "illegal under international law". Warning European shoppers that supermarket shelf grapes and dates tagged "made in Israel" are probably produced in "illegal" settlements, NGOs have demanded an EU-wide ban on imports of settlement goods. The EU currently imports €230 million of goods a year from Israeli settlements in the occupied territory or 15 times more than from Palestinians themselves.
Ukraine's parliamentary election has been branded unfair by international observers who said the result reversed earlier democratic gains the country made. Kyiv Post reports OSCE observers cited the absence from the election of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, the unfair use of government resources by President Viktor Yanukovych party aand tilted media coverage as the election's main problems. With about 70 percent of the ballots counted, the president's Regions Party and his Communist allies have received about 48 percent of the vote.
Kathimerini says the publisher of a magazine that named more than 2,000 people with Swiss bank accounts in cash-strapped Greece has been charged with breaking data protection laws. Costas Vaxevanis appeared in court in Athens after the weekend publication in Hot-Doc magazine of the list of depositors at an HSBC bank in Switzerland. The names were apparently taken from data on 24,000 HSBC customers that the bank reported stolen in 2010. Many international clients risk prosecution by tax authorities if they failed to declare the assets in their home countries. The list was also published by Greece' top selling daily newspaper, Ta Nea.
Le Parisien reports President Francois Hollande has met with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, in a bid to resolve the tech giant's dispute with Paris over a proposed bill that would force search engines to pay for content from French media. Google has opposed the plan and threatened to bar French websites from its search results if the tax is imposed. Germany is considering a similar law, and Italian editors have also indicated they would favour such a plan.
A new British study shows that the benefits of pre-emptive breast cancer screening outweigh the risks, insisting the practice saves thousands of lives. "Breast screening extends lives," concluded a panel of researchers in The Lancet medical journal. The new research adds to the debate about the dangers of over-diagnosis, which sees some women undergo invasive treatment for cancers that would never have made them ill or even been diagnosed were it not for the scans.