The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports that Mark Gaffarena offered sale of part of a Valletta property before he had acquired it.
The Malta Independent says there is no automatic blacklisting for companies that supplied concrete to Mater Dei.
In-Nazzjon leads with the appointment of Rosette Thake as PN general secretary.
l-orizzont says the hospital repairs will cost some €35 million.
The overseas press
Fox News reports the US senate has failed to prevent the expiry of counter-terrorism legislation under which the National Security Agency undertakes the mass collection of telephone data of American citizens. The White House criticised the Senate’s “irresponsible failure”. Senators will now debate a Bill to introduce more closely targeted security measures.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has told Die Süddeutsche Zeitung that if Greece left the eurozone, foreign investors’ trust in Europe would decrease. He said during his visit to Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe had told him that Japanese investments in Europe depended on trust in the euro. Junker said the Greek debt would be one of the main topics of today’s forthcoming meeting in Berlin, between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, although this was not officially on the agenda of planned talks.
Meanwhile, writing in Le Monde, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attacked his country’s creditors for insisting on what he described as “absurd reforms” which had only served to hold up progress in negotiations for a deal aimed at preventing Greece from defaulting. “The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance,” Tsipras wrote. He warned that Europe was now at a crossroads: it could choose between a strategy of greater integration or one of division.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Kotzias has urged a compromise in the debt crisis and issued warnings about the consequences of Greece’s possible leaving the eurozone. He told a meeting of the leftist parliamentary group of the German Bundestag in Marburg, Hessen: “Whoever destabilises Greece, destabilises Europe.”
According to the private TV station La7, early projections from local elections in Italy, indicate Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has failed to get the strong endorsement he wanted in order to push ahead his labour and education reforms, which have met with resistance from trade unions as well as the left wing of his party. Ansa announced that some 54 per cent of the Italian electorate voted in regional elections set to gauge the popularity of his centre-left Democratic Party (PD) after a year and a half in office. There were strong performances by the Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment Cinque Stelle movement and the right wing Lega Nord.
La Republica quotes the EU’s border-control agency saying some 5,000 migrants had been plucked from the Mediterranean over the past three days. Frontex’s operation Triton also recovered the bodies of 17 would-be migrants. An Italian coast guard vessel brought the 17 corpses ashore at the port of Augusta on the southern island of Sicily on Sunday, after they were discovered on a rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean. Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into how they died. The Italian vessel also arrived with more than 450 survivors on board.
According the Egyptian news agency MENA, the internationally-recognised parliament of Tobrouk, in Libya, has condemned the control of the city of Sirte by Islamic State militants. It also called on the international community, the Arab League and the UN Security Council to intervene and decide “urgent practical steps to support Libya in the war against terrorism”.
CCTV says a smoking ban now in force at all indoor public places in Beijing would be supervised by thousands of inspectors. Fines would be imposed on venues that do not comply.
El Pais reports Spanish pop star Enrique Iglesias is receiving treatment after he cut his hand during a Saturday concert when he tried to catch a drone filing the activity. Iglesias continued the show with his hand blooded and bandaged, smearing his T-shirt. The mishap occurred in front of some 12,000 people in Tijuana, Mexico, as part of Iglesias’ “Sex and Love” world tour. A flying drone is used during shows to get crowd shots.
The Daily Express reports British bookies have slashed the odds on the hottest June on record as forecasters say a heatwave will send temperatures soaring. Rain and gales are expected to be replaced by blazing sunshine with the mercury expected to hit 280C, rivalling resorts in the Mediterranean.
A US recycling centre is looking for a woman who dropped off an old Apple computer that turned out to be worth $200,000. The computer was inside boxes of electronics that she had cleaned out from her garage after her husband died. The San Jose Mercury News reports it was one of only about 200 first-generation desktop computers assembled by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne in 1976.
The FIFA corruption scandal was a “behind-the-scenes” conspiracy, organized to discredit FIFA President Joseph Blatter, his daughter Corinne Blatter has told the BBC. She stressed that her father was not a kind of person who took bribes. Meanwhile, former FIFA vice president Jack Warner used an article from The Onion to blast the United States, saying charges against him are motivated by the Americans’ desire to host the World Cup.