The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times says a steering committee is to be set up to oversee the Air Malta restructuring process.
The Malta Independent says the UHM wants to be on the steering committee despite not having official recognition at Air Malta.
MaltaToday says Air Malta losses could hit €51 million.
In-Nazzjon says that Joseph Muscat has not taken up the challenge of naming whoever allegedly decided that consumers would not be informed of Arms Ltd mistakes.
l-orizzont says Marsa power station is in a race against time as time allocations for the use of the chimneys runs out. It also report that a dog used by the Civil Protection Department was poisoned, an autopsy revealed.
The overseas press
The Wall Street Journal quotes the International Energy Agency warning governments to do more to increase efficiency and boost green technologies to meet a forecast 36 per cent increase in energy demand by 2035.
The BBC reports the European Commission has fined 11 airlines more than $1 billion (€727 million) between them for fixing air cargo prices. The airlines include British Airways, Air France and Japan Airlines. The Commission described their behaviour as “deplorable” and “detrimental” to consumers and businesses.
EU Observer says the EU has called on Turkey to open up trade with Cyprus, to better promote gender equality and human rights. In its annual report on the progress of would-be EU members, the European Commission announced that only one of seven candidates for membership in the bloc, Croatia, was close to achieving its goal.
UK nationals focus on David Cameron's visit to China and his dilemma over the country's human rights record. The Independent says the Prime Minister will risk angering China by criticising the country's human rights record and political system. The Guardian has the same story claiming attempts to raise the case of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Lui Xiaobo were likely to antagonise the Chinese.
O Globo reports a prison riot in northern Brazil has ended with 18 inmates killed after prisoners took their wardens hostage. At least three of the men were decapitated by their own cell mates and their severed heads toss out of the windows of the prison block.
The New York Post says 17 people have been charged with defrauding a fund set up to compensate victims of the Nazi holocaust. Prosecutors said the accused obtained around $42 million (€30.5 million) by making false applications for thousands of people who did not qualify for aid including some who were not even born until after the war.
Le Parisien reports that the controversial French Bill raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 has been formally approved by the country’s constitutional court, opening the way for President Nicolas Sarkozy to make it law.
Pravda says that Ernest Galko, the 57-year-old former chief judge of Czechoslovakia’s Constitutional Court, has been shot dead at his home. After the fall of communism in 1989, Mr Balko become a politician and served as the Czechoslovak Constitutional Court’s chief judge from 1992 until the country’s peaceful split in 1993.
Deutsche Welle reports that a convoy of nuclear waste, which was reprocessed in France, has finally made it to a German storage depot after facing a four-day struggle through protesters who had formed human shields across the shipment’s route in an attempt to slow it down. A shepherdess even put her flock of 500 sheep and 60 goats across the road between Dannenberg – where the shipment was offloaded from train onto trucks – and Gorleben in a bid to slow it.
The Sun says an English teacher who permanently damaged her voice trying to make herself heard in a noisy classroom has been awarded more than £150,000 (€175,000). She quit her job, claiming she constantly had to shout above the din of a nearby children’s play area. It is thought to be one of the biggest payouts received by a teacher.
Metro leads with a strange story from Italy, where a couple's marriage has been annulled because the wife “thought about” having an affair. The Italian judges who granted the annulment said that even though the wife had not cheated, she had, in effect, breached her promise of a “good marriage”. She has also been told that she would not be entitled to maintenance payments from her former husband, who claimed she had often talked of having an open marriage, although she had “never put the idea into practice”.