The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times of Malta reports how dozens of migrants scrambled for life as their overloaded boat capsized yesterday afternoon, triggering a major rescue operation..
In-Nazzjon and l-orizzont feature an identical main heading - Another tragedy in the Mediterraean.
The Malta Independent reports as its main story that three payday loans companies are registered in Malta
The overseas press
Euronews quotes Ahmet Üzümcü, director of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, saying the award of the Nobel Peace prize bestowed upon the organisation yesterday, would inspire them to continue in their work. The global chemical weapons watchdog, overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, currently has 27 inspectors in Damascus. He said the prize should be seen as “an incentive and an encouragement to the efforts by the international community over the years to ban these weapons for good”.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports Human Rights Watch has accused opposition forces in Syria, fighting to defeat the Assad regime, of committing crimes against humanity. The New York headquartered charity says it has documented at least 190 cases of civilians being killed by Islamist rebels last August. It said 67 of them were executed during an offensive on 10 villages in Latakia province, cradle of Syria’s Alawite minority, to which the clan of President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
The Wall Street Journal says finance chiefs of the G20 have called for Washington to quickly resolve the political paralysis over its budget and debt ceiling. Meeting in Washington, the finance ministers and central bankers of the economic powers warned that there were still risks to global economic growth, and that many countries faced “unacceptably high unemployment”. In a statement to the steering committee of the International Monetary Fund, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew saying the reputation of the United States as a global “safe harbour” was at risk as the government remained partially shut for the eleventh day.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports President Obama and Congressional Republican leaders are inching towards a resolution to their fiscal impasse, but struggling to nail down details of a short-term deal to increase the US debt limit and reopen the government. The US President met Senate Republicans at the White House and spoke with House of Representatives speaker John Boehner by phone as negotiations intensified to find a way to get federal workers back on the job. He also held a conference call with 150 major business leaders and 25 governors about the impact of the shutdown on the US economy.
Al Ahram reports some 2,000 Islamists have rallied in Cairo and in Alexandria police fired tear gas to disperse Muslim Brotherhood supporters when they clashed with counter-protesters. Nationwide, protests and crackdowns have led to the deaths of up to 1,000 people and the detention of 2,000, mostly Islamists, since August 14, when security forces killed hundreds of Morsi supporters in a brutal crackdown at Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares.
Fox News says the US has confirmed that American troops are holding senior Pakistani Taliban commander Latif Mehsud, a leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) captured by US forces in a military operation. TTP had claimed responsibility for the failed 2010 attempt to detonate a bomb in New York’s Times Square. The news surfaced as Secretary of State John Kerry was in Kabul trying to negotiate the terms of a US-Afghan security agreement that would govern the activities of American forces in Afghanistan after the Nato-led combat mission ends at the close of next year.
CNN announces that the US Air Force has removed Major General Michael Carey, a 35-year veteran, from his command of 20th Air Force, responsible for all 450 of the service's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). The move comes after an investigation revealed alleged “personal misbehaviour”. Alcohol abuse has been cited as cause. The moves comes just two days after the Navy announced that Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the second-in-charge at US Strategic Command, was fired amid an investigation for allegedly using counterfeit chips at a casino in Iowa.
Metro reports The Hague has ruled that Libya can try Muammar Gaddafi’s spy chief spy. Previously, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had demanded Abdullah al-Senussi’s handover for trial. Senussi and others, including Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and former heir apparent, stand accused of crimes against humanity during the 2011 revolt against the dictator.
Il Tempo says former SS officer and war criminal Erich Priebke, who died in Rome yesterday, refused to repudiate his Nazi past in his last testament. Priebke, aged 100, was serving a life sentence under house arrest for his part in a 1944 reprisal at a quarry known as the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome that killed 335 men and boys including 75 Jews. The atrocity was ordered by Hitler a day after 33 SS policemen from the northern Italian German-speaking city of Bolzano were killed by a partisan bomb in Rome.
The 16-year-old Pakistani girl whose advocacy for education made her the target of a Taliban assassination attempt has told an audience in New York she hopes to one day become her country’s prime minister. Malala Yousafzai made her comments in an interview with CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. She spoke a few hours after she was awarded Europe’s top human rights prize and on the eve of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, for which she was considered a likely contender.
ABC reports Australia’s national football coach Holger Osieck has been sacked following a 6-0 thumping by France in an international friendly this morning. Just eight months before the start of the World Cup, Australia turned in another horror show following last month's six-goal belting by Brazil. Football Federation Australia confirmed Osieck's axing in a statement, with chairman Frank Lowy saying the decision was “based on the longer term issues of the rejuvenation of the Socceroos and the preparations for the World Cup”.