The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta reports how a girl, 13, lied that her grandfather raped her. It also reports how there are 366 civil cases awaiting sentence in court, 60 per cent before Mr Justice Joseph R Micallef.
MaltaToday gives details about a whistleblower's e-mail about 'works for votes' in Gozo. It also reports that a survey shows Joseph Muscat leading Simon Busuttil by 15 points in a trust barometer. Labour leads the PN by eight points.
The Malta Independent on Sunday reports that John Dalli is still refusing to explain his 'charity' visit to Bahamas.
It-Torca gives prominence to plans for a private hospital in Smart City. It also CCTV will be set up in a number of locations to detect dumping in the roads and countryside.
Il-Mument says the prime minister should declare when Gozo Minister Anton Refalo told him about the allegations of abuse in Gozo. It also says a company including relatives of Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg was given EU funds it may not have been entitled for.
Illum focuses on a spate of thefts from homes for the elderly.
KullHadd says Simon Busuttul and Chris Said had been informed of abuses in Gozo.
The overseas press
Newswatch reports Nigeria electoral commission has extended voting to today after problems occurred as millions turned out to vote in a presidential election that analysts said was “too close to call” between President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari. Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote. In other areas, vote counting has already begun.
Meanwhile, a federal lawmaker has told AFP suspected Boko Haram gunmen beheaded 23 people and set fire to homes in Buratai, northeast Nigeria. Elsewhere in Nigeria’s restive northeast, suspected Islamist militants killed at least seven people in separate attacks in the Gombe state.
The Wall Street Journal reports Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot who crashed a jet into a French mountainside early Tuesday, had been dumped by his girlfriend a day before the crash, was being treated for depression and was possibly facing the loss of his job over eye problems.
French TV channel iTELE says Lubitz and his girlfriend of seven years shared an apartment in Dusseldorf and planned to get married in 2016. The New York Post said the channel reported that the day before the crash, the fiancée ended the relationship. Welt am Sonntag reveals police have discovered drugs used to treat psychological disorders and proof of a serious “psychosomatic illness” of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz.
Reuters reports Libya has told an Arab summit that a UN arms embargo on the country must be lifted to help prevent the advance of Islamic State militants. Aqila Saleh, president of Libya’s internationally-recognised parliament, warned the delay in arming the Libyan army gave an opportunity to terrorists to flourish in Libya and to spread beyond it.
al bawaba says Islamist rebels have captured the north-western Syrian city of Idlib from government forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Idlib is only the second provincial centre to fall into rebel hands, after Raqqa was seized by Islamic State (IS). Syria’s civil war, which began four years ago, has killed more than 200,000 Syrians and displaced 11 million.
Labour in the UK has taken a four-point lead in the first major poll since the TV battle between Opposition leader Ed Miliband and British Prime Minister David Cameron. A YouGov survey for the Sunday Times put Labour on 36 per cent, ahead of the Tories on 32 per cent. UKIP sits on 13 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 8 per cent and other parties on 1 per cent.
Il Tempo reports tens of thousands of workers have marched through the centre of Rome against Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s reform of the labour market, headed by a popular union chief who is seen by many as a possible future leader of Italy’s left. The leader of Italy’s main engineering union, the FIOM, Maurizio Landini has accused Renzi of moving his Democratic Party (PD) too far towards the political centre, abandoning it traditional roots.
The Hunffington Post says Paris’s Eiffel Tower switched off its lights, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate went dark and Hong Kong’s famed skyline dimmed as landmarks the world over observed Earth Hour, the global climate change awareness campaign. Millions of people around the world took part in the annual Earth Hour organised by conservation group WWF, with a string of well-known sights plunging into darkness.
Channel News Asia quotes Chinese President Xi Jinping calling for more cooperation among Asian nations. Opening a regional economic forum, he also also called on the world’s nations to support Beijing’s ideas for a new development bank that some see as a potential rival to the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank and the Japanese-dominated Asian Development Bank.
Sputnik says the UN has evacuated staff from war-torn Yemen as Russia warned Saudi-led air strikes on Iranian-backed rebels were affecting crunch nuclear talks between world powers and Tehran. Yemen’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi urged his Arab allies to keep up the bombing raids in his country until the Huthi Shiite rebels surrender, branding them Iran’s “puppet”.
Straits Times reports world leaders including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to attend today’s state funeral of Lee Kuan Yew who died last week at 91. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Lee’s eldest son, was Chief Mourner in a week of tributes to his father that included a 70-metre procession on foot by his extended family.
A new record number of 2,500 items of non-food consumer goods that pose a risk to health made their way to the European market in 2014. Ansa says the most dangerous items were toys (28 per cent) and textiles (23 per cent), followed by electrical equipment (9 per cent) and motor vehicles (8 per cent). The majority (64 per cent) came from China, followed by European countries (14 per cent), Turkey three per cent), other third world countries (12 per cent), while 7 per cent are of unknown origin.