The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.

Times of Malta reports on how two Maltese are among a number of people under investigation for match-fixing in Italy.

MaltaToday says the government is seeking two plots, of about 25,000 square metres, for the American University.  

The Malta Independent says applications for Barts' five-year medical programme in Gozo are open for €35,000 annually.

l-orizzont reports that Giovanna Debono was informed about works commissioned by her husband.

In-Nazzjon says the Police Commissioner and the Minister of Home Affairs are not getting along, with the commissioner resisting interference.

The overseas press

 

Le Matin reports Moroccan police have dismantled a 10-member cell that was allegedly recruiting fighters for the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq. The Interior Ministry said the cell, which operated in Casablanca and Boujniba, was also plotting with an IS leader to set up sleeper cells for future terrorist operations inside Morocco.

A 20-year-old woman was burnt alive after refusing to perform an “extreme sex act” on a fighter from the Islamic State extremist group, UN envoy on sexual violence in conflict Zainab Bangura told the Middle East Eye website. She said IS was abducting young women and girls, stripping them naked and leering at them, examining their breasts and testing their virginity before selling and re-selling them as sex slaves and forcing them into short-term marriages and prostitution.

VOA News reports President Obama has met his top security advisers in Washington to discuss the situation in Iraq, following the capture of the strategic city of Ramadi by Islamic State militants. In Iraq itself, Al Ayyam says the government has issued a new call for volunteers to fight the militants.

Foreign ministers from Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are holding a crisis meeting in Kuala Lumpur, to discuss how to deal with thousands of people trying to reach their countries by boat. ABC says international migration observers estimate there are thousands of people at sea in South-East Asia attempting to flee persecution or poverty, including at least 2,000 people trapped for more than 40 days on boats off Myanmar without food or water. Myanmar, the source of many of the asylum seekers, has reportedly refused to attend.

Prince Charles has become the first British royal to meet Irish republican leader Gerry Adams, the veteran president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the now-defunct Irish Republican Army paramilitary group. Irish News reports Prince Charles met Mr Adams at the National University of Ireland’s campus in Galway shortly after starting a two-day visit to the republic – a visit that will take him to the scene of his great-uncle’s murder by the IRA.

Hackers successfully attacked the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, redirecting users of its online research services to fake websites set up by the attackers. Bloomberg quotes a bank statement saying it discovered the breach last month, adding that hackers compromised the domain name registrar and were able to redirect users to phony sites.

President Putin has proposed creating a “Eurasian” currency union which would have Belarus and Kazakhstan as its first members. As Channel News Asia reports, Putin made his proposal at a meeting with the Belarussian and Kazakh presidents which highlighted the challenges facing the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union following the fall in global oil prices and the decline of the Russian rouble.

Sole 24 Ore reports Alitalia has announced it will not renew its partnership with Air France-KLM when it expires in January as it is “no longer beneficial, either commercially or strategically, to the new Alitalia and its ambitious turnaround plan”. The Franco-Dutch carrier’s share in Alitalia fell to 1.1 per cent last August when the United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airways acquired a 49 percent stake in Alitalia. The deal with Ethihad was part of a 1.7 billion rescue plan to avoid Alitalia’s second bankruptcy in six years and kick-start an ambitious restructuring of the Italian carrier.

John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, is poised to announce that he is to divorce his wife Sally over her alleged affair with his cousin. A friend of the family indicated to The Irish Independent that he is likely to make a public statement in the next few days. Bercow’s marriage has been a constant source of attention throughout his six-year tenure in the role, with his wife becoming a household name after posing for a photo-shoot in Speaker’s House draped in a sheet and appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. Allegations that she had been having an affair with her husband’s cousin Alan Bercow emerged last week.

USA Today reports a California sex worker has pleaded guilty to killing a Google executive with an overdose of heroin aboard his yacht in November 2013. The prosecution stated that Alix Tichelman, 27, injected Forrest Timothy Hayes and left the scene without calling for medical help after he lost consciousness.

The New Yorker says a millionaire American lawyer embroiled in a High Court cash battle with his fifth wife has won a fight to keep his hands on a Steinway baby grand piano. Richard Fields, 59, and his estranged Russian wife Ekaterina Fields, 42, both wanted the baby grand which was in the New York apartment where they used to live. The arguments struck a chord with the judge and he said Mr Fields had owned the piano before the couple married and should keep it.

Construction work for next year’s Olympic Games in Rio came to a partial halt yesterday after thousands of workers demanding a pay rise put down their tools. O Globo estimates some 70 per cent of some 12,000 workers preparing South America’s first ever Olympiad were on hold as the dispute hit several sites. A judge ruled Monday that at least 30 per cent of workers should maintain basic construction services pending a solution to the dispute.

 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.