The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta reports that a bus driver was suspended and the vehicle taken out of service yesterday after a Youtube video showed him driving as his steering wheel was coming off. In another story it said Anthony Callus, the MUSEUM member charged with defiling a 10-year-old boy during a swimming outing, was granted bail.
Malta Today says up to 10 members of the Administrative Law Enforcement police unit have been transferred. In another story it says former Nationalist Health Minister Louis Galea has expressed surprise at news that the concrete structures at Mater Dei’s accident and emergency department are weak to the point that they cannot hold the weight of two planned wards.
In-Nazzjon say renovation works at Mcast, which had to be carried out with EU funds were being carried out by government employees using Mcast funds.
The Malta Independent says the third set of test results from the concrete columns in the emergency ward confirmed that the concrete used was of an inferior quality. It also reports on the bus driver’s suspension.
L-Orizzont says EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom will be visiting Malta tomorrow. It also reports on the granting of bail to MUSEUM member Anthony Callus.
International news
VOA News quotes US State Department spokesman Jen Psaki saying Washington is sickened by the murder of US journalist Steven Sotloff at the hands of Islamic State militants. The US and UK are investigating a video which purportedly shows the beheading of Sotloff by an Islamic State militant who warns that a British hostage will be next. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who will be chairing a meeting of the government’s emergency committee Cobra later this morning, said: “If verified, this is a despicable and barbaric murder.”
Al Manar TV says Al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels holding 45 Fijian peacekeepers hostage have issued a set of demands for their release, including the extremist group’s removal from a UN terrorist list and compensation for the killing of three of its fighters in a shootout with international troops. The Nusra Front seized the Fijians on Thursday in the Golan Heights, where a 1,200-strong UN force monitors the buffer zone between Syria and Israel. The rebels also surrounded two Filipino units, but those UN troops escaped over the weekend.
TV network al-Arabiya reports police in Saudi Arabia have arrested 88 alleged terrorists. They are thought to have been preparing attacks “at home and abroad”.
Cairo’s Mena news agency reports at least 25 dead in heavy fighting near Benghazi’s Benina airport between forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar and the militias of Ansar al-Sharia and allied groups. The battle has been going on since Saturday.
Reuters reports EU officials have proposed further sanctions to starve Russian firms of cash as punishment for Moscow‘s role in Ukraine, where rebels said they were storming Donetsk airport, potentially their biggest prize since turning the war’s tide last week.
Meanwhile, Tages Anzeiger quotes the head of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva saying more than a million people have been forced from their homes because of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels – double the number of three weeks ago. At least 814,000 have moved to Russia and 260,000 have taken refuge in Ukraine.
La Republica reports more than 900 illegal migrants arrived in the Sicilian port of Augusta after they were rescued by the Italian coast guard. Deployed under Operation Mare Nostrum, the Italian navy, coast guard and police rescued 1,600 more in the hours leading up to the Augusta landing.
Dawn says Pakistan’s lawmakers rallied behind the country’s embattled prime minister Tuesday in an emergency session, even as thousands of protesters remained camped outside of parliament demanding his ouster. Speaking for the government in the joint session of Pakistan’s National Assembly and the Senate, the country’s interior minister slammed the protesters demanding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation, describing them as “terrorists”.
The world’s worst Ebola epidemic has endangered harvests and sent food prices soaring in West Africa, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said. Il Tempo reports FAO warned the problem would intensify in coming months.
CNN says two American men who spent 30 years in prison for rape and murder, one of them on death row, have been released after DNA evidence proved their innocence. Mentally disabled half brothers Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46, were convicted in 1984 of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl in North Carolina. Recently analysed DNA evidence from the crime scene implicated another man, who is in prison for a similar crime.
Tele 5 reports Ashya King’s parents have been freed from a Spanish prison. Brett and Naghemeh King were detained after taking five-year-old Ashya, who has a brain tumour, from a Southampton hospital against medical advice. They were released after UK prosecutors withdrew a European arrest warrant, stating that they were happy any risk to Ashya’s life “was not as great or immediate as... originally thought”. Ashya is being treated in a hospital in Malaga.