The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta says airspace over Libya could be shut today and Malta is preparing for an influx of workers escaping from that country. It also reports that a Magistrate has ruled that sheep in a Gozo farm can be culled, for public health reasons.
The Malta Independent quotes Astrid Vella, coordinator of the FAA as saying that the political activism of the president of The Developers' Association is obscene.
In-Nazzjon reports that Simon Busuttil called on the government to heed the national interest in view of the crisis in Libya.
l-orizzont says a flight from Libya did not take place last night as 103 Maltese chose to stay in that country.
The overseas press
Al Jazeera reports at least 36 people were killed in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi where Libyan Special Forces and Islamist militants clashed on Saturday night and yesterday morning. The government said more than 150 people have died, many of them civilian, in the capital Tripoli and Benghazi in two weeks of fighting .
Israel sees no need for another Gaza ceasefire, an Israeli official was quoted as saying as tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Washington flared over US mediation to end the three-week-old conflict. Reuters says fighting had subsided over the weekend, with the battered Hamas Islamists endorsing a UN call for a 24-hour halt ahead of today’s Eid al-Fitr festival.
NRC Handelsblad quotes Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying an international military mission to secure the MH17 crash site in Ukraine was “unrealistic”. Ukraine has passed the lead on the crash investigation to the Dutch, which lost 192 people on flight MH17.
VOA News reports the United States released a series of satellite images that appear to support its claims that Russian forces have fired across the border into Ukraine, suggesting a new level of direct Russian involvement in the conflict.
Cameroon Tribune says Boko Haram militants have abducted the wife of Cameroon’s Vice-Prime Minister Amadou Ali. The attack claimed the lives of 10 people, military sources said. In another incident, Seini Boukar, a religious leader locally known as ‘Lamido’, was kidnapped by the militants.
According to Perth News, a group of 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who were held at sea by Australian authorities for almost a month, have arrived at a detention camp on mainland Australia. Indian consular officials are due to begin interviewing members of the group, whose boat was intercepted by the Australian navy several weeks ago after setting sail from India. The group was taken to the remote Curtin Detention Centre in outback Western Australia.
Daily News reports Los Angeles Fire Department took eight people to the hospital following a freak storm that hit 13 people and killed a 20-year-old man at Venice Beach and another at Catalina Island on Sunday afternoon.
ABC says the Ebola virus continues its grim march across West Africa as the World Health Organisation reported that at least 100 health workers have been infected with the disease and 50 percent of them have died. WHO has reported that 1,093 people were infected with the virus as of July 20 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and of those infected 660 have died. T
Xinhua reports that a waterway in eastern China has mysteriously turned a blood red colour. Residents in Zhejiang province said the river looked normal at 5 a.m. Beijing time on Thursday morning. Within an hour, the entire river turned crimson. Residents also said a strange smell wafted through the air. One local villager commented on China’s microblogging site Weibo, “The really weird thing is that we have been able to catch fish because the water is normally so clear.” Inspectors from the Wenzhou Environmental Protection Bureau said they have not found the cause of the incident, although water samples seem to indicate the suspicious color was a result of illegal dumping in the river.