The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports that the cost of living wage increase is expected to be only €1.16 per week, owing to low inflation.
The Malta Independent says the Ombudsman will investigate its report over the use of slurry on fields in Mgarr.
In-Nazzjon says that a year after a tunnel to a bank vault was discovered in Swieqi, no one has been taken to court.
l-orizzont reports how the elected Mayor of Tripoli has been living in Malta for the past three weeks.
The overseas press
Raising fresh concern around the world, a nurse in Spain has become the first person, in the latest outbreak of Ebola, to become infected without having been to Western Africa. El Pais reports the unnamed nurse from Madrid treated two missionaries who died from Ebola after being flown home from the region. She is the third case of Ebola in Spain
Le Soir says Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, who is set to become the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, has said that the bloc needed to review its relations with Russia over the next five years. EU-Russian relations have been strained by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea earlier this year and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
BNR Nieuwsradio announces that dozens of Kurds have stormed the national parliament building in The Hague in a peaceful protest against Islamic State fighters who are attacking the Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria.
Meanwhile the Iraqi news agency Nina reports 22 civilians, including four children, were killed when an air strike by the US-led coalition mistakenly hit a building about 70 metres from an ISIS post at the Iraqi town of Hit, 150 kms west of Baghdad.
Voice of Nigeria says the Islamist militant group Boko Haram beheaded seven people at Ngambi in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Borno. The Islamists have carried out a string of attacks on the state.
Reuters reports pro-democracy protests in Chinese-controlled Hong Kong remaining camped out in heart of city after more than week of demonstrations and behind-the-scenes talks showing their first signs of progress.
The Washington Post says gay campaigners in the United States have welcomed the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage to go ahead in five states that wanted to maintain bans.
Aftonbladet announces that this year’s Nobel Prize for medicine has been awarded to American London University College Professor John O’Keefe and jointly to Norwegian neuro-scientists May-Britt and Edvard I. Moser from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Trondheim. They discovered cells that operate a “GPS system” in the brain that enables people to produce mental maps and navigate the world
The New York Times reports The New York Waldorf Astoria, one of the city’s most valuable properties, has been sold by Hilton to a Chinese company for $1.95 billion.
Metro says Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British-Iranian woman held in a Tehran prison for more than three months after going to a men’s volleyball match, has gone on hunger strike. Her mother Susan Moshtaghian confirmed her daughter’s protest in an emotional update on a Facebook page set up to campaign for her release.
Mail & Guardian reports a British millionaire accused of murdering his wife on their honeymoon in South Africa has told a judge he was bisexual. Shrien Dewani, 34, denies orchestrating his wife’s death by hiring three men to kill the 28-year-old as they drove through Cape Town’s Gugulethu Township on 13 November, 2010.
The Daily Mail says a 20-year study into the effects of cannabis use has found the drug is highly addictive and causes mental health problems.
A police squad stormed into a brothel in the centre of Moscow but ended up drinking, abusing prostitutes and beating up clients, Gazeta.ru reports. In an effort to hide evidence of their behaviour, the policemen turned off all internal cameras except for one that they missed which provided highly embarrassing footage of their foray into the brothel. The squad has been lambasted by the daily official government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta which has suggested the men be dismissed from the police force.
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