The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta reveals that drug fines are to the pegged to smoking penalties.
The Malta Independent on Sunday says Mepa has called in the police as development in San Blas Bay continued. A site near the beach has been levelled and turned into a campsite.
MaltaToday reports that Air Malta insiders baulk at millions of forecast losses.
Il-Mument reports that Maltese citizenship is being sold to unknown rich people.
It-Torca says health centres are to be modernised so people would not feel the need to go to the Emergency Department at Mater Dei.
Illum says passengers have been stopped at Catania airport as they were to export illegal amounts of funds to Malta. €1.5m were seized.
KullHadd says the PN is against the nomination of Karmenu Vella as EU Commissioner.
The overseas press
The British government says it’s working urgently to verify a video which purportedly shows the beheading of British aid worker David Haines, held hostage by Islamic State militants since March last year. The BBC quotes British Prime Minister David Cameron condemning the apparent killing as “an act of pure evil” and vowed to do everything to hunt down the killers. President Obama has promised US support to help bring the killers to justice.
Al Ahram reports US Secretary of State John Kerry has said Egypt had a critical role to play in tackling the Islamic State. He was speaking in Cairo on the final stop of a regional tour to build Arab support for a coalition against the militants.
The Scotsman on Sunday says the battle for Scotland’s future is on a knife edge as a new poll of polls last night suggested the vote was too close to call, with just days to go before the referendum. An independent analysis of the six most recent polls put the Yes campaign on 49 per cent and No on 51 per cent. It came on the most intensive day of political campaigning that Scotland has ever seen.
Kyiv Post reports Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has accused President Putin of aiming to destroy Ukraine as an independent country. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told channel TVC the ousting of Ukraine’s pro-Russia President Yanukovych was a coup “organized with the direct support, if not encouragement, of the United States and Brussels”.
Avvenire says Pope Francis has declared “war is madness”. The Pontiff was speaking at a Austro-Hungarian cemetery in northern Italy, the final resting place of 100,000 Italian soldiers killed in the First World War. Francis said calls for peace are now ever more urgent as violence rages in the Middle-East, Ukraine and parts of Africa.
The US National Security Agency and British intelligence services are able to secretly access data from telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and several other German operators. According to Der Spiegel, an NSA programme called “Treasure Map” gives the US agency and Britain’s electronic eavesdropping GCHQ near real-time information about the operators’ networks, right through to end users on computers, smartphones or tablets.
Asian Journal reports 70 passengers are still missing yesterday’s sinking of a ferry off the central Philippine island of Leyte. Officials said 14 have been rescued so far.
And El Peruano says at least 19 people were killed and 12 injured when a bus plunged off a 200-metre cliff in south-eastern Peru. The driver is thought to have lost control of the vehicle while driving at speed.
According to India Times, a bus smashed into a bridge and plunged into a river in India, killing at least 16 people after the driver lost control of the vehicle. Three other people were in critical condition.
Le Journal du Dimanche reports Air France is to cut 50 percent of its flights as of next Monday, when the week-long pilots’ strike against cost cuts kicks in. The strike will cost the company between 10 and 15 million euros a day, CEO Francois Gaey told the broadcaster France Inter. Air France is planning to invest in the Transavia airline in order to boost market share, and to transfer its own pilots on contracts deemed unacceptable by the unions.
According to AG I, the Italian small traders association, Confesercenti, has said 2014 will be a very bad year for the country’s commerce and tourism unless there is an exceptional recovery over the next few months. At their AGM, members were informed that from January to August, a total of 24,167 companies went out of business, an average of 100 per day. Since 2007, households have lost an average of €4,400 in purchasing power, which had impacted consumption.