The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says a senior financial adviser who was arrested for suspected drink driving on Saturday evening and who allegedly bit the skin off a policeman’s arm yesterday claimed he had been beaten by the police. In another story, it says the government is not expected to appeal against a European Court of Human Rights judgment that ordered it to pay €226,000 in compensation to 19 dockyard workers poisoned by asbestos.
In-Nazzjon says that according to the Chinese community, authorities at the Chinese Embassy had been aware of a human trafficking ring bringing Asians to Malta to work at Leisure Clothing Ltd, which abuse the community said had been going on for a long time.
L-Orizzont said Dominic Gafa’s cleaning company remained disqualified from getting public contracts even though this had changed its name from Gafa Saveway to IClean Services Ltd.
The Malta Independent says PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami has returned to Malta following surgery in London.
International news
Le Soir says EU border control officials meet in Brussels today to discuss how best to deal with a surge in migrants trying to reach Europe. The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates more than 165,000 irregular migrants had tried to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past nine months, compared with 60,000 for the whole of 2013. Almost half of the 2014 arrivals were Syrians and Eritreans. The main pressure point is the Central Mediterranean route with Italy and Malta receiving more than 140,000 of the 2014 arrivals. Since the beginning of 2014, more than 3,000 have died or gone missing at sea.
Reuters reports British Prime Minister David Cameron has reiterated Britain would not pay “anything like” the €2.1 billion the European Union wants from London after Eurosceptic media praised him for taking what they called “a noble stand against money-grabbing Eurocrats”. Cameron told the House of Commons he had no intention of paying the bill in its current form, adding the bill made it harder to make the case to keep Britain in the EU before a membership referendum he has promised in 2017 if he is re-elected next year. Support for UKIP is at a record high, with one in five voters now backing Nigel Farage's party.
Fox News announces the US Centres for Disease Control has issued new guidelines for health workers who return from West Africa after treating Ebola patients and is recommending voluntary isolation at home for those deemed high risk. The announcement follows international criticism of a mandatory quarantine introduced in some states, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Estonia's leading Postimees newspaper reports a female teacher was shot dead yesterday by a 15-year-old male pupil in a high school rampage in Estonia – the first case of its kind in the Baltic state. The motive for the attack remained unclear. However, the paper said the unidentified boy had made disturbing posts on Facebook alongside photographs of guns and war.
El Universal reports Mexican authorities have arrested four drug gang members believed to be involved in the kidnapping of dozens of student teachers who disappeared last month. The announcement came as local media reported that a mass grave has been discovered in a trash dump in the south western state of Guerrero, where 43 students disappeared after they clashed with police and masked men last month.
Toronto Star says voters in the Canadian city of Toronto have elected a new mayor, John Tory, to replaced Rob Ford whose time in office was marred by scandals over his illegal drug use and public drunkenness. Tory, a conservative politician and broadcaster won the election in a closer-than-expected race, fighting off a strong challenge by the mayor’s brother, Doug Ford.
Al Jazeera says a suicide bomber has killed at least 27 Shi’ite militiamen after security forces pushed Islamic State militants out of the area over the weekend. Army and police sources said the attacker, driving a vehicle packed with explosives, also wounded 60 Shi’ite Muslim militiamen, who had helped government forces retake the town just south of the capital.
Haaretz quotes an Israeli government spokesman saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would expedite planning for some 1,000 settler homes in East Jerusalem, in a bid to placate a restive coalition ally without further aggravating a dispute with Washington. The ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, led by Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, has been issuing veiled threats to leave the coalition unless Netanyahu agrees to its call for 2,000 new building tenders in settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The World Economic Forum’s annual index of gender equality shows that the five Nordic countries have again outperformed most of the world. Tribune de Genève says increased access for women to politics and the workforce has narrowed the global gender gap in the past 10 years. The report says “sweeping changes” in many countries led to 105 countries becoming more equal since 2005. Iceland tops the list for the sixth year running, with Yemen placed last.