The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta leads with the terrorist attacks yesterday in France, Tunisia and Kuwait.
The Malta Independent says yesterday was a Day of Terror.
In-Nazzjon also leads with yesterday's terrorist attack.It also says that an 18-year-old security company director was chosen on merit.
l-orizzont reports a speech by the GWU General Secretary where he said Palumbo shipyard needs to follow what it had agreed to.
The overseas press
World leaders and institutions have condemned yesterday’s deadly attacks from suspected Islamist militants in France, Tunisia, and Kuwait that left dozens killed and hundreds wounded.
Huffington Post says international investigators are coordinating to establish whether the three attacks were linked. A gunman killed at least 37 people and wounded dozens more in an attack on a beach resort in Tunisia. In Kuwait, a suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, while a man with suspected ties to French Islamic radicals rammed a car into a gas factory in south-eastern France, triggering an explosion that injured two people. The severed head of a local businessman was left hanging at the factory’s entrance.
The New York Times quotes UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying those “responsible for such appalling acts of violence must be swiftly brought to justice”. Interpol offered its help to all three nations.
Al Arabiya reports UN Security Council spokesman Farhan Haq said in a statement, “these heinous attacks will only strengthen the commitment of the United Nations to help defeat those bent on murder, destruction and the annihilation of human development and culture”.
The Washington Post quotes a White House statement condemning the three “terrorist” attacks, also calling them “heinous”.
According to Berliner Zeitung, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany stands united with France against “terror’s blind hate” and in defence of “free society”.
The Times quotes British Prime Minister David Cameron saying he was “sickened” by the attacks and expressed solidarity the three countries.
El Mundo says condemning the attacks, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote in a message on Twitter: “Barbarism will always be confronted by unity among democrats.”
Cairo’s Al Ahram reports Al-Azhar, considered as the highest Sunni Islamic body, called for the international community to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for an attack on Shiite Mosque in Kuwait. “What the (Islamic State) has done to malign the image of Islam is far more than what anyone else has done, whether Muslim or non-Muslim,” it said in a statement.
Italy has raised its terror alert level to the third-highest in January, after the jihadist attacks. Ansa quotes Interior Minister Angelino Alfano saying, “No country is without risk. We have raised the level of alert to re-sensitize those units charged with protecting sensitive places.”
Earlier, Il Tempo announced anti-terrorism police detained a Pakistani accused of organizing a 2009 bomb attack on a Peshawar market that killed more than 130 people. They believe the man to be part of a jihadist network based in Italy, which was plotting terror attacks on Rome and possibly the Vatican.
In other news...
Greece will hold a referendum tomorrow week on a controversial bailout deal with foreign creditors. Ta Nea says that in a televised address, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras described the plan as “humiliation” and condemned “unbearable” austerity measures demanded by creditors. The Greek government earlier rejected the proposals, aimed at avoiding the country defaulting on its debt. Greece has to repay a debt of €1.5 billion to the IMF debt next Tuesday.
Fox News reports the US Supreme Court has decided that the country’s constitution provides same-sex couples the right to marry. In a historic triumph to the American gay rights movement, the court ruled 5-4 that the constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law mean that states cannot ban same-sex marriages. With the landmark ruling, gay marriage becomes legal in all 50 states.
CNN says US police have shot and killed one of two prisoners who broke out of a maximum security prison in New York three weeks ago. New York governor Andrew Cuomo said Richard Matt was armed with a shotgun and refused to surrender when he was shot. Matt, 49, had been on the run with fellow convicted murderer David Sweat, 35, after using power tools to cut their way out of their cells at the Clinton Correctional Facility before dawn earlier this month, in a spectacular escape reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.
Reuters reports the United States has arrested 1,140 people on charges of sexually preying on children as part of a nationwide sweep to protect children. The US Justice Department said the arrests stemmed from a two-month operation in April and May tracking alleged offenders who use the Internet to lure youths and traffic them into commercial sexual exploitation, child pornography and travelling abroad to engage in child sex tourism.