The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says that according to the first nationwide check-up on the island’s health system, nearly half of Malta’s elderly population suffer from high blood pressure. It also reports Prime Minister Joseph Muscat saying he is not aware of any donations handed down to the Labour Party by Café Premier owners, but the party’s books were being looked into to establish the facts.
In-Nazzjon also reports on the Cafe Premier saga reporting Dr Muscat saying he was not aware of donations by the owners to the Labour Party or members of Cabinet.
L-Orizzont quotes Dr Muscat saying that anyone close to him found to have a secret Swiss account would have to step down.
The Malta Independent leads with reports of Dr Muscat speaking on both the Cafe Premier donations and Swiss accounts.
International news
The Financial Times reports Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has told reporters in Pamplona that EU officials estimate a hypothetical third bailout for Greece could amount to between €30 billion and €50 billion. However, he did not confirm that talks were under way for a third bailout. Greece received two bailouts, in 2010 and 2012 worth a total of €240 billion and new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has repeatedly said there would be no “third memorandum” as the previous agreements are known.
Meanwhile, Euronews says the European Commission was pushing for unity after Tsipras accused Spain and Portugal of leading a conservative conspiracy to topple his anti-austerity government. Pointing specifically to Spain and Portugal, he said on Saturday that “conservative forces in Europe tried to drive us into financial asphyxia”. Both Madrid and Lisbon have filed official protests with the EU about the Greek accusations.
According to The Associated Press, Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu clashed over Iran’s nuclear diplomacy on the eve of the Israeli prime minister’s hotly disputed address to Congress. In a speech to the largest US pro-Israel lobby, Netanyahu claimed that President Obama did not – and could not – understand his nation’s vital security concerns. Hours later, Obama told Reuters in an interview that Iran should commit to a verifiable freeze of at least 10 years on its most sensitive nuclear activity for a landmark atomic deal to be reached.
As people in Moscow continue to leave floral tributes at the scene where Boris Nemtsov was slain over the weekend, Reuters reports President Obama said his killing was a sign of a worsening climate in Russia where civil rights and media freedoms had been rolled back in the last several years. The opposition politician and fierce critic of the Kremlin was gunned down while walking home from a nearby restaurant on Friday night.
More than a third of French voters believe the country’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen “embodies French republican values”, according to a shock poll for left-leaning newspaper Libération published just weeks before key regional elections. Polls give the far-right anti-immigration and anti-Europe party up to 33 per cent national support – well ahead of the ruling Socialists, the conservative opposition UMP and other parties which have been consistently trailing behind.
al-Araby al-Jadeed reports Iraqi government forces have launched a large-scale military operation to Tikrit, assembling a force of 20,000 troops, made up of regular army units, Shiite militias and Sunni tribesmen. And in an unprecedented move, the Iraqi government and parliament officially requested Iranian Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani to oversee the operation by supervising and advising Iraqi forces, effectively, commanding the joint Iraqi-Iranian offensive. Some 13,000 Islamic State militants are fighting the battle in Tikrit.
In a long article entitled “Five hours with the Five”, Granma says former Cuban President Fidel Castro has met with the five Cuban intelligence agents freed by the US after a long detention in Florida, and honoured in the island as the “Five Heroes of Miami”. Meanwhile, the death has been announced of Natalia ‘Naty’ Revuelta, Castro’s former lover in the ‘50s, just before the revolutionary leader took power. She was 89. Revuelta was the mother of his ‘rebel’ daughter Alina Fernandez, who escaped from Cuba in 1993 with a falsified Spanish passport and then moved to Miami to become a fierce critic of the communist regime
The Los Angeles Times reports three police officers shot and killed a man on the city’s Skid Row as they wrestled with him on the ground, a confrontation captured on video that millions viewed online. Authorities say the man was shot after grabbing for an officer’s gun. After the shooting, police are seen drawing their batons and warning an angry crowd to step back. Several people shouted at the officers, accusing them of going too far.
Most UK nationals report England and Sunderland player Adam Johnson’s suspension by his club after his arrest on suspicion of having sexual activity with an a girl under 16. The Daily Mirror says the 27-year-old winger was detained at his home earlier yesterday and questioned at Peterlee police station in County Durham. Durham Constabulary said he was later bailed to return to the same police station at a future date.
The Journal reports a woman who blogged for years about her son’s poor health has been convicted of poisoning him to death with salt. Lacey Spears showed little emotion as a New York state jury found her guilty of second-degree murder of five-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears. The 27-year-old repeatedly force-fed the boy sodium through a stomach tube before he died in January last year.
Avvenire says “Shades of Truth”, a new film that aims to shed light on Pope Pius XII and his relation to the Nazi regime, had its world premiere at the Vatican yesterday. The movie tackles the accusations that Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” who allowed the systemic genocide of the Holocaust, and instead seeks to show that he was “the Vatican’s Schindler”, who set up a vast network that helped save hundreds of thousands of people from the Third Reich.
Daytime television’s most popular personality, “Judge Judy” Sheindlin, has extended her contract for three years and plans to keep her court in session into 2020. CBS Television Distribution didn’t discuss terms of the deal. TV Guide has reported the 72-year-old’s current salary is $47 million a year – making her by far the highest-paid personality on television.