The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times says that a report has unveiled startling trends among young people, particularly on free access to internet in their rooms.
The Malta Independent focuses on the crunch EU meetings to solve the Greece debt crisis.
MaltaToday says e-mails between Joseph Muscat and RTK journalism Sabrina Agius were leaked to The Times before being splashed by Net. It also says that a survey shows Austin Gatt to be the least popular cabinet minister.
It-Torca says the police are waiting for the Speaker to investigate Joseph Muscat’s hacking claims. It also reports that there are complaints that rents at SmartCity are too high.
KullHadd said Lou Bondi has not taken up Pullicino Orlando’s challenge for a face-to-face debate. It also says that while Austin Gatt claimed that SmartCity had not cost the government anything, the government spent €15m on the demolition and re-location of factories from Ricasoli.
Il-Mument highlights relations between Labour leaders and Muammar Gaddafi. It also marks the 90th anniversary of the first PN electoral win.
Illum says the writings of Fr Mark Montebello are being controlled and monitored. It also says that according to its survey, 37.5% think the PL will win the next general election, just over 15% think the PN will triumph, and the rest are undecided.
The overseas press
European leaders are in Brussels in a last-ditch effort to stamp out a two-year-old financial crisis that threatens to tip the world into a recession. Bloomberg says heads of government of EU-member states take over after two days of meetings by finance ministers at a 10 a.m. summit to be followed by another next Wednesday – a self-imposed deadline to complete a plan to beef up the euro bailout fund, cut Greece’s debt without triggering a default, shield banks from the fallout and ensure Italy and Spain don’t succumb to the contagion.
Tunisians go o the polls today to vote in the first free election of the Arab Spring – nine months after the fall of former President Zinedine el Abidine Ben Ali. They will elect a 217-seat assembly that will draft a new constitution and appoint an interim government. Al Horria says Islamist party Ennahda was expected to win the most votes, though it was not clear if it would gain a majority. Ben Ali fled Tunisia mid-January amid the first of several mass uprisings across the Arab world.
Libya's acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril has said he wished former leader Muammar Gaddafi was alive. He told the BBC’s Hardtalk programme he would have wanted to know from him why he did what he did to the Libyan people. "I wish I were his prosecutor in his trial," Jibril said, adding that he would welcome a full investigation into the colonel's death as the UN has urged. It would be "absolutely OK" to carry out a full investigation under international supervision into the killing, as long as Islamic burial rules were respected.
The statement comes as Libya's new leaders, under pressure to give a full account of Gaddafi's death, prepare to declare the country's liberation later today. Al Jazeera reports UN human rights Commissioner Navi Pillay called for a full investigation, as have major human rights groups. Video footage showed Gaddafi being captured alive – and then dead. Officials say he was killed in crossfire. The Libyan commander whose forces captured Gaddafi said he had tried to save him so that he could stand trial. He told the BBC that as his men dragged Gaddafi from his hiding place, they came under fire from three sides and it was impossible to tell who fired the shot that killed Gaddafi.
Al Bawaba quotes Jibril, who plans to resign after liberation, saying the new Libyan interim government “should last until the first presidential elections”. Speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, he said the transitional council must move quickly to disarm the rebels and ensure huge caches of weapons were turned in over the "next few days". Jibril also said the Libyan people must remember the agony of the past and choose a different path for the future.
Los Angeles Times quotes senior Libyan officials saying Gaddafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion (€144 billion) in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was ousted. That’s about $30,000 (€21,600) for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected. The paper quotes “one person who has studied detailed records of the asset search” saying that if the values proved accurate, Gaddafi would go down in history as one of the most rapacious as well as one of the most bizarre world leaders, on a scale with the late Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire or the late Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
Ad Dustour says Jordan’s King Abdullah has urged Israel and the Palestinians to look to the Arab Spring uprisings for inspiration and to restart their stalled peace talks. Speaking at the opening of a two-day special meeting of the Davos-based World Economic Forum, he said the future for the Middle East and beyond was with the “normalcy of peace”. He said a Palestinian-Israeli deal must consider Israel’s “security and acceptance” and allow for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Perth Now reports shark hunters have set baited hooks off the southwest Australian coast hoping to catch a great white that killed an American recreational diver. Fisheries officials set six lines with hooks off the tourist haven of Rottnest Island where witnesses saw a 3-metre great white shark take the 32-year-old man Saturday. Scientists have warned against an overreaction to the third fatal shark attack off Australia's southwest coast in less than two months.
According to Indiana Globe, a pair of identical twins now have another birthday in common: Jessica and Jennifer Patterson, 21, delivered babies on the same day at the same hospital. Jennifer Patterson gave birth first to a girl, Adalynn Rose Patterson, who was born with a collapsed lung but is now doing fine. Eight and half hours later, Jessica Patterson gave birth to a boy, Mason Douglas Patterson, by caesarean section. Hospital spokeswoman Amanda Roach said no one could recall the last time identical twins delivered babies at the hospital on the same day.