The following are the top stories in the national and international press.
The Times says that the Church response team had decided Mr Pulis was not guilty and had asked him to continue taking care of children. This was just a few days before he was caught in an act by a social worker. In another story, it reports on the tanker Cartagena which has now arrived in Benghazi.
In-Nazzjon says that the victims of child abuse by two priests found guilty by the courts on Tuesday were considering opening a court case for compensation.
In a similar story, l-Orizzont says that one of the victims, Laurence Grech, was considering requesting compensation from the church for the abuse he had to go through.
The Malta Independent reports Cyrus Engerer’s lawyer Carlo Bisazza saying he never made any allegations about the police or Edgar Galea Curmi.
The international press:
The BBC reports Asian stock markets slumped early today, extending a global equity sell-off after Wall Street had its worst day in more than two years. Japan's main Nikkei 225 index shed 3.4 per cent, South Korea lost 4.2 per cent, while Australia slid 2.4 per cent. Yesteerday, shares in the US and Europe tumbled on fears about the strength of the US economic recovery and the eurozone debt crisis. Analysts have warned that global markets might remain volatile in the coming weeks as investors panic that the world economy could slip back into recession.
The Financial Times reports that so far this week more than €400 billion have been wiped off the value of the top shares on the German, British, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch stock market indexes – almost the size of the €440 billion capacity of the rescue fund set up by the European Union. Investors piled more money into safe-haven assets like government bonds. Gold was also enormously popular and it hit fresh records heading up towards $1,700 an ounce. The euro fell one percent against the dollar.
According to Deutsche Welle, in a letter to the 27 European heads of government, the President of the European Commission expressed doubts about the efficacy of the European rescue fund designed to bail out struggling members of the euro currency zone. Jose Manuel Barroso urged "a rapid re-assessment of all elements related to the European Financial Stability Facility and concomitantly the European Stability Mechanism in order to ensure that they are equipped with the means for dealing with contagious risk". The EFSF was created to deal with the Greek debt crisis. The ESM is due to succeed it mid-2013.
Börzen Zeitung says officials moved to calm markets and ease volatility around the world, with the largest move coming from Tokyo, where the government spent an estimated one trillion yen (€9.2 billion) to stem the strength of its currency. The intervention came a day after an unexpected cut in interest rates by Switzerland to weaken the franc. Safe-haven assets like the Swiss franc, the yen and gold have spiked this week as investors fret that governments around the world are planning spending cuts at a time of slowing global economic growth.
El Pais reports that in the midst of the worsening eurozone debt crisis, Spain has survived a crucial test of its ability to sell government bonds. With the financial markets worried that the euro zone’s fourth biggest economy could be the next to need a bailout, Madrid managed to find buyers for €3.3 billion-worth of bonds but had to pay a hefty rate of interest. Worries about Spain going the same way as Greece, Portugal and Ireland pulled down shares in Madrid nearly four percent with those falls mirrored around Europe.
Euronews says instability was also threatening to engulf Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, which also has huge public debt and is having to pay unsustainably high rates of interest to borrow. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi repeated assurances that Italy’s economy was solid. Trying to stave off market turmoil, he promised a comprehensive reform pact with unions and employers by September aimed at getting the economy to grow. He brushed off fears about the sharp rise in Italian borrowing costs.
Le Monde reports that a French court has ordered an investigation into IMF chief Christine Lagarde for alleged abuse of authority in her previous job as French Finance Minister. Prosecutors want to probe her role in approving a €285-million payment to businessman Bernard Tapie, a close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, in July 2008. At the time, Tapie was in the middle of a court battle with the former state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais. Lagarde denies any misconduct and there is no suggestion she profited personally from her decision.
The New York Times says that according to US estimates, the drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of five. This was the first time such a precise death toll had been released related to the Horn of Africa crisis. The United Nations has said that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The world body says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished.
The Washington Times quotes US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying that the Syrian government was responsible for more than 2,000 deaths in its crackdown against protests. She spoke as an army assault against protest hub Hama was reported to have killed dozens of people in recent days. Residents of the city said snipers and tanks were firing on civilians and food and medicine were running low. Activists have dismissed a government decree to allow opposition parties after decades of Baath party rule.
The Daily Express says women’s feet were getting bigger – with an 80 per cent increase in size nine (42) shoes. The average female foot is now one and a half sizes bigger than 10 years ago – and experts say it is because women are taller and heavier. Many high-profile women have bigger feet, with Nicole Kidman, Michelle Obama, Paris Hilton and Kate Winslet all taking size nine– the same as the average British man. And demand has hit record highs, with 80 per cent more women buying bigger sizes. But research has found that 82 per cent of women size eight (41) and above were embarrassed by their big feet.