The following are the top stories in the local and international press today:
The Sunday Times says that rubber bullets were fired by the forces of law and order during the riots at the Safi detention centre earlier this week. In another story, the newspaper says that the country is preparing to take in new Libya evacuees.
The Independent on Sunday says that Maltese nationals were trying to escape Tripoli as rebels advanced to the capital. In another story, it says that Malta has highest rate of prisoners who are also minors.
Malta Today says that Air Malta senior official Philip Saunders had a tough meeting with the Malta Tourism Authority as the airline took on new trainee pilots. In another story it says that Maltese doctors were insisting that foreign ones should officially register even if they working in Malta voluntarily.
It-Torca says that there will be no food for patients at the Gozo General Hospital as from tomorrow. It also reports on the escape of prisoner Joseph Cini, il-Pele.
Illum says that Guze Ellul Mercer’s son is joining the Labour Party as a candidate.
Il-Mument reports that a number of US MPs resigned over e-mails.
Kullhadd quotes sexual abuse victim Lawrence Grech saying that St Joseph’s Home in Sta Venera had been a nest of sexual abuse and he had seen other priests abusing children. In another story, the newspaper quotes Sedqa’s clinical director George Grech saying that it was as easy to acquire drugs in prison as it was outside.
The international press
After sustained automatic gun fire and a series of explosions rocked Tripoli, Al Jamahariya TV broadcast a live audio message by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi early this morning during which he congratulated his supporters for repelling an attack by what he called "rats" in the capital. Gaddafi accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of trying to steal the country's oil and said that the rebels were “bent on the destruction of the Libyan people”. He urged his supporters to “march by the millions” to end a months-long rebellion which he termed a “masquerade”.
Earlier, Al Jazeera quoted Libyan rebels claiming that “zero hour” had started as gun battles reached the eastern neighbourhoods of Souq al-Jomaa, Arada and Tajoura. The rebels said they launched their first attack on Tripoli in coordination with NATO just hours after opposition fighters captured the key city of Zawiya nearby. NATO aircraft made heavy bombing runs after nightfall, with loud explosions booming across the city.
An opposition activist in Tripoli told Reuters an unknown number of insurgents had been killed in the suburb of Qadah and elsewhere. He said rebels had surrounded a military airbase called Mitiga in the Tajoura district, the Tripoli neighborhood most strongly opposed to Gaddafi's regime. However, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told Al-Jamahariya state television that "all of Tripoli is safe and stable”.
Al Ahram reports that Egypt's cabinet has said that an Israeli statement expressing regret for the border deaths of five policemen was not enough but stopped short of saying if it would recall its Tel Aviv envoy. It quoted a cabinet statement as saying on Sunday that “the Israeli statement was positive on the surface, but it was not in keeping with the magnitude of the incident and the state of Egyptian anger toward Israeli actions". It insisted on a timetable for an Israeli offer of a joint investigation into the deaths on Thursday as Israeli troops pursued militants who carried out attacks earlier in the Negev that killed eight. The reaction came as thousand of Egyptians protested late into the night outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo. An Egyptian protester on Sunday climbed up to the embassy, took down its flag and replaced it with an Egyptian one.
El Mundo reports a freak violent thunderstorm forced Pope Benedict XVI to cut short his speech to an estimated one million young pilgrims gathered for the church's world youth festival. During the day, firefighters sprayed the crowds with water from hoses, and pilgrims sought shade from umbrellas, trees and tents in a bid to stave off temperatures of 40oC. As night fell, a flash downpour drenched the crowd and forced the 84-year-old Pontiff to merely deliver brief greetings in a half-dozen languages. The wind blew off Benedict’s skull cap and rain soaked his script. But he told the crowd “the rain was a blessing”.
Two Americans arrested more than two years ago while hiking along the Iraq-Iran border have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges that include espionage, Iran’s state TV, IRIB, reported Saturday. The announcement seemed to send a hard-line message from Iran's judiciary, which answers directly to the ruling clerics, weeks after the country's foreign minister suggested that the trial of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal could clear the way for their freedom.
Toronto Star says a chartered Boeing 737 plane crashed Saturday afternoon in Canada's Arctic region, killing 12 people. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the plane went down near the hamlet of Resolute Bay in the Arctic territory of Nunavut.
The Norway Post says survivors of a massacre which claimed the lives of 69 people in Norway last month carried flowers to the site of the killings on Saturday. Tears blended with laughter as they remembered the joys of an island youth camp that turned into a scene of horror on July 22.
The lawyer for the woman who accused former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault says he believes prosecutors plan to dismiss some or all of the charges. Attorney Kenneth Thompson tells The New York Times that he got a letter from an assistant district attorney asking to meet with his client Monday, the day before Strauss-Kahn's next scheduled court appearance. The letter said the purpose was to discuss what would happen in court.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has weighed into the debate over this summer's rioting, accusing David Cameron, Ed Miliband and his successor as Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown of not properly understanding and addressing the underlying causes. Writing in the Observer, he says suggestions that what happened shows Britain is in moral decline are nonsense. "The big cause is the group of alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour."
The New York Post reports that the police were trying to locate the parents of a newborn baby discovered in a shoebox outside a home in Queens. They said the baby was in a stable condition at Elmhurst General Hospital.
A "cow whisperer", helicopters and infrared cameras – no effort is being spared to find Austrian runaway cow Yvonne. The cow has become a media star after she escaped slaughter in May to seek refuge in a Bavarian forest. She has been missing for over three months now and Germany's leading newspaper Bild is putting up a €10,000 reward for her capture. Last week, a bull named Ernst was brought in to help lure Yvonne out of the forest with his voice. Her son Friesi has also been roped in to help, to no avail.