The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit is insisting he did nothing wrong despite being singled out by an inquiry board for gross negligence. It also says former home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici had ordered the detention services head not to sack officers involved in the 2011 death of a migrant, despite their refusal to cooperate, according to a long-awaited inquiry. In another story, the newspaper says cartoonist Maurice Tanti Burlò passed away yesterday aged 78.
The Malta Independent leads with yesterday evening’s parliamentary debate on home affairs.
In-Nazzjon quotes Opposition leader Simon Busuttil in Parliament yesterday saying that the people wanted to live in a normal country.
L-Orizzont leads with the 2011 inquiry report. In another story, it says that a decision on whether Paul Sheehan should be given bail will be given tomorrow.
International news
AGI reports that the details of enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA that have emerged after a publication by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its report into the torture of detainees following 9/11 have been condemned around the world. This was the first time Congress had officially admitted to the CIA's trickery and brutality, which President Obama described as being incompatible with American values.
According to Kabul Post, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said the CIA had violated human rights and US law. Għani’s comments came as the US Department of Defence has announced the closure of its last detention centre in Afghanistan. A Pentagon spokesman said all prisoners held at the US facility at Bagram Airbase had now been either transferred to Afghan custody or repatriated.
Gazeta Polska says the prosecution services in Poland charged with investigating the existence of secret CIA prisons there has let it be known that it will request the report on the torture meted out to Al Qaeda suspects from the American Senate.
Asia Times reports the Chinese and North Korean governments, both frequently accused of human rights violations by NGOs, lost no time in trying to push the US into a corner, with Beijing urging the US to clean up its own backyard. Pyongyang has called on the UN Security Council, which will be looking at the human rights situation in North Korea within the next few days, to condemn the US.
In Europe, too, indignation was flowing. Berliner Zeitung quotes German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier saying that what was then considered right, and done in the fight against Islamic terrorism, was unacceptable and a serious mistake. David Nevin, the lawyer for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, has meanwhile asked that his client be spared the death penalty, saying that following 183 fake executions, this would be a cruel and unusual punishment.
France 24 reports the International Criminal Court has said Libya was in violation of an obligation to hand over murder suspect Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council. Saif is accused of ordering atrocities in a failed attempt to put down the uprising that led to the toppling and killing of his father, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011. Although he is being held by rebels in the country’s western Zintan region who operate outside the internationally-recognised government’s authority, the ICC said in May that Libya must hand him over.
Jihadist attacks have killed more than 5,000 people in November. An investigation by the BBC and King's College, London found that 5,042 people were killed in 664 jihadist attacks across 14 countries. About 80 per cent of the deaths came in just four countries – Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Afghanistan. Iraq was the most dangerous place to be, with 1,770 deaths in 233 attacks. In Nigeria, 786 people, almost all of them civilians, were killed in 27 Boko Haram attacks.
The world’s deadliest sea is the Mediterranean says the UN refugee agency, reporting that more people than ever are embarking on risky sea crossings in search of a better life. Ansa reports the UN said the previous high of about 70,000 in 2011 during the Libyan civil war has roughly tripled. Syrians and Eritreans make up half the total. The bulk of arrivals has been in Europe: more than 207,000 people crossing from the Middle East and countries in Africa since January 1, 3,419 died trying.
The Jerusalem Post quotes Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon has ordered an investigation into the death of Palestinian government minister Ziad Abu Ein following a confrontation with Israeli forces. Several witnesses said the minister had been hit and shoved by soldiers and had been hit in the chest by a tear-gas canister fired by them.
South China Morning Post reports bailiffs, backed by Hong Kong police, have started to move in on pro-democracy demonstrators who have set up camps and blocked roads in the city centre for more than two months. The authorities have warned they must leave to allow officers to clear the barricades and reopen the roads.
The Ebola responders, doctors, volunteers and all those combatting the lethal virus, have been named TIME magazine's Person of the Year 2014, in homage to the courage of those who risk contagion and therefore their lives to saving the sick and trying to halt the epidemic. TIME's editor, Nancy Gibbs, said Ebola was a war, a danger. The global health system was not yet powerful enough to protect us from infectious diseases, but the rest of the world could sleep easy thanks to a group of men and women prepared to stay up and keep fighting.
The Guardian says a British economist has warned that drug-resistant infections have claimed 10 million lives a year and would have cost the world some $100 trillion by 2050 unless more is done to tackle the problem. The analysis, by economist Jim O'Neill, found that drug resistant E. coli, malaria and tuberculosis would have the biggest impact. In Europe and the United States, antimicrobial resistance causes at least 50,000 deaths each year, they said. And left unchecked, deaths would rise more than 10-fold by 2050.
Journal de Monaco says Prince Albert and his wife Charlene on Wednesday welcomed their twin babies Gabriella and Jacques to the world. Gabriella Therese Marie was born at 5.04 pm followed by Jacques Honore Rainier two minutes later, the principality said in a statement, adding that both babies and their mother were “doing well”. Prince Jacques is next in line to the throne.