The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says the Gozo General and St Luke’s hospitals are to be converted into new medical centres “on par with, or even better than, Mater Dei” through a €200 million investment. In another story, it reports the testimony of EU anti-fraud chief Giovanni Kessler who said former European Commissioner John Dalli had raised the prospect of lifting the snus ban in two official meetings.
All other national newspapers also lead with Dr Kessler’s testimony in court yesterday.
L-Orizzont reports about the €200 million investment with Barts Medical School announced yesterday on Times Talk.
Malta Today says the first intake of 60 students is expected by September 2016.
The Malta Independent says the Prime Minister will preside over the signing of the Barts Medical School agreement at an event in Zebbug today.
In-Nazzjoni carried a photo of Opposition leader Simon Busuttil during a visit to St Julian’s on the occasion of St Patrick’s Day.
International news
The Jerusalem Post reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party holds a small lead over its major opposition party following yesterday’s elections, keeping alive his hope for a fourth term. With 81 per cent of the votes counted, Likud have secured 31 seats, the centre-left opposition Zionist Union, headed by Isaac Herzog has garnered 24 while the the Joint List, a grouping of Arab parties, comes in third with 23. Final results are expected later today.
An envelope sent to the White House tentatively tested positive for cyanide, the Secret Service said yesterday. Agency spokesman Robert Hoback said in a statement forwarded to The Blaze that a White House mail screening facility received the envelope on Monday. Initial tests were returned negative, but a later chemical test indicated the envelope was positive for cyanide. The sample was sent to another testing facility to confirm the results. The Secret Service would not disclose any further information.
Reuters says Libya’s internationally-recognised government has said any sales of the country’s oil should be arranged through the state firm under its leadership to prevent fraud. So far customers have continued paying for exports worth hundreds of millions of dollars each month through state National Oil Corp based in Tripoli, which is under effective control of the rival government.
Euronews reports Turkey has inaugurated a €10-billion project to pump Azeri gas to Western Europe. The 1,850 km Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline – stretching from Turkey’s border with Georgia to Greece – would carry 16 billion cubic metres of gas a year by mid-2018.
The Wall Street Journal says the United States has urged countries to think twice before signing up to a new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, questioning whether it would have sufficient standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards. Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in saying they would join. Europe’s participation reflects the eagerness to partner with China’s economy, the world’s second largest, and comes amid prickly trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington.
AFP quotes the Nigerian army saying it had repelled Boko Haram from all but three local government districts in the northeast. At the start of this year, the militant Islamic group controlled a territory the size of Belgium, but a concerted push by Nigeria’s military and neighbours Chad, Cameroon and Niger has regained considerable ground.
According to Times of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he was “deeply concerned” about the rape of a 74-year-old nun and the demolition of a church, as protests for the better protection of women and religious minorities erupt across the country. He has asked for an immediate report on the violence over the weekend. There were angry scenes in parliament as legislators demanded to know why a man accused of the rape had not been arrested.
Le Figaro reports French lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly by 436 votes to 34 in favour of a law allowing medics to place terminally ill patients into a deep sleep until they die. The law, which has re-ignited the deeply divisive debate about euthanasia, also makes living wills – drafted by people who do not want to be kept alive artificially if they are too ill to decide – legally binding on doctors.
El Pais says Spanish forensic anthropologists have unearthed the apparent remains of Spanish literary giant Miguel de Cervantes in a Madrid convent almost 400 years after his death. Francisco Etxebarria said his team had positively identified “some fragments” of the Don Quixote author who died in 1616. Though there is no genetic proof of the find at this stage, they were confident of the claim on the basis of the documentary research they carried out.
Caracol reports a Colombian Air Force plane whose cargo hold looked more like the hull of Noah’s Ark delivered nearly 150 trafficked animals back to the Amazon on Tuesday following months of rehabilitation. The 149 animals – 83 reptiles, 53 birds and 13 mammals, including wild cats and Capuchin monkeys – went through thorough medical examinations to make sure they would not spread disease back to their natural populations.
People breastfed as infants have higher intelligence scores in adulthood, and higher earnings, according to a study published Wednesday that tracked the development of 3,500 newborns over 30 years. And, critically, the socio-economic status of mothers appeared to have little impact on breastfeeding results, according to a paper published by The Lancet medical journal.
A study published in JAMA Neurology says researchers examining memory and effects on the aging brain report that men have worse memory performance than women as they age. In addition, a gene that is a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease was not found to be associated with worse memory performance.