The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says a group of US investors agreed to buy Saint James Group’s flagship hospital in Sliema. In another story it quotes the Malta Tourism Authority saying it did not carry out an environmental impact assessment before starting the “upgrade” of seven kiosks at Għadira Bay, because the interventions merely replaced existing structures.
The Malta Independent also leads with the sale of Saint James Hospital saying the deal will be finalised in two weeks time.
L-Orizzont leads with a report of the Prime Minister’s speech in Gharghur yesterday during which he said that in its first two years his government implemented major social reforms.
In-Nazzjon says that a major fight followed an argument on promotions at the Labour Party club in Victoria last Friday.
International news
AGI quotes UN special envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon telling the UN Security Council a deal between rival Libyan governments in Tripoli and Tobruk to fight Islamic State (ISIS) militants has “never been closer in the last seven-eight months”. He said the Islamist militia was “strengthening its presence on the ground”. Leon said talks on boosting security in Libya were “an enormous challenge”. Representatives of the two factions meet again in Morocco later today.
Catherine Herridge, chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News, has said Abdelhakim Belhadj, who despite ties to al-Qaeda was backed by the United States and NATO during the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, has joined the Islamic State in Libya and was leading forces there. According to The Washington Times, Belhadj’s reported move to Islamic State would bolster the terrorist group’s efforts to recruit Libya’s existing jihadist forces, which includes as many as 3,000 fighters.
Meanwhile, Pravda reports the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, has said the Russian secret services confirmed “growing contacts” between Isis and the terrorists of the North Caucasus.
La Sicilia reports 10 migrants have died in yet another shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily. The Italian Coast Guard managed to rescue 941 people during the last 24 hours in operations coordinated by the Rome-based National Rescue Centre. They say they come from Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Libya and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Al Ayyam says the Palestinian foreign ministry has called on the Vatican and on the international community to protect Christian and Muslim sites in the Holy Land. The ministry condemned two attacks last month by Jewish settlers who torched a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem and vandalised and set fire to a mosque in the village of Al Jaba’ah, near Bethlehem.
The New York Times reports Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went on trial for his life yesterday in the Boston Marathon bombing, with his own lawyer, Judy Clarke, bluntly telling the jury he did it. But she argued that he had fallen under the influence of his older brother. Three people were killed and more than 260 hurt when two pressure-cooker bombs exploded near the marathon’s finish line seconds apart on April 15, 2013. Tsarnaev is accused of carrying out the attacks with his older brother, now dead.
China is defending its proposed cyber security laws as “beyond reproach” in the wake of harsh criticism from the US – criticism that Xinhua news agency called “arrogance and hypocrisy”. In late 2014, China published rules for foreign companies wishing to do business in China, which included handing over encryption keys, allowing for “back doors” into company systems to allow Chinese counter-terrorism surveillance. President Obama had called these requirements “something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States”. But China maintains that they are security practices similar to the US’ own – indeed perhaps more transparent – and a normal condition of doing business.
Sputnik says Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. He was gunned down in Moscow on Friday night.
Asia Today reports US Ambassador Mark Lippert was slashed on the face and wrist by a man wielding a weapon with a 10-inch blade and screaming that the rival Koreas should be unified. TV images showed a stunned-looking Lippert staring at his blood-covered left hand and holding his right hand over a cut on the right side of his face, his pink tie splattered with blood. The bleeding envoy was taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries.
ABC says Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has made an eleventh-hour bid to save the Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran from the firing squad. She proposed to repatriate three convicted Indonesian drug criminals in return for the lives of the two men but it is understood Indonesia did not accept the offer.
The Mason City Globe Gazette reports US transportation safety investigators say they are reviewing a request to reopen a probe into the 1959 plane crash that killed rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, JP “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and their pilot. It said there were further issues that the NTSB needed to investigate.
Ansa reports Pope Francis has made an impassioned call against the marginalisation of the elderly. He told his general audience, “A civilisation can be called as such when there is respect for the elderly,” he said, adding that when they are sidelined or discriminated against “this society is carrying the virus of death”. The western population is ageing, he said, and this condition leads us to believe that the elderly are useless burdens. “It’s ugly and a sin”.