The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press
The Times reports how EU leaders struggled last night to strike a deal to save the euro. It also reports how a Ukrainian man who killed his wife was jailed for 25 years.
The Malta Independent says EU banks have been forced to take a bigger hit to absorb the Greek debt. It also reports how Alfred Sant yesterday criticised the fact that EU deals involving financial outlays are not being ratified by the Maltese Parliament.
In-Nazzjon says the leaders of the movement against divorce have ‘belied’ Opposition leader Joseph Muscat, who on Tuesday implied that one of them had leaked e-mails.
l-orizzont says Lou Bondi has not taken up the challenge to face Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in a debate on Inkontri. It also says a Nigerian man’s corpse has been in a hospital morgue for six months as investigations continue into his involvement into the escape of migrants.
The overseas press
According to France 24, eurozone leaders early this morning sealed a three-pronged deal to overcome the festering debt crisis when banks agreed to take a 50 percent loss on Greek debt. Eurozone officials announced the deal following tough talks in Brussels between leaders of the eurozone and the Institute of International Finance banking lobby to force the private sector to share the pain of Greece's debt burden. The agreement was the last and perhaps toughest chapter to negotiate in a wide-ranging four-point plan to find a lasting solution to Europe's festering debt crisis.
The Irish Independent says Ireland goes to the polls today to choose a new president. Seven candidates are battling to succeed Mary McAleese who’s standing down after 14 years. The post is largely ceremonial but campaigning has been combative, with several candidates forced to defend themselves against various allegations concerning money, terrorism and attitudes to sex.
Tripoli Post reports that Libya’s National Transitional Council has confirmed that it was investigating reports that Col. Gaddafi was subject to a violent sexual assault moments before he died. Mobile phone video footage taken of the incident, and played in slow motion, has led to the new allegations. The Libyan interim government is already investigating whether the former leader was executed after his capture by the rebels last week.
Dubai-based Al Alaan TV has screened grainy amateur footage that it claims showed a funeral ceremony near Misurata, held over the open wooden coffins which appeared to contain the bodies of Muammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and Gaddafi's former defence minister Abu Bakr Yunis. In the short video, a cleric, believed to be Gaddafi's own Khaled Tantoush, who was captured alongside the former leader five days ago, appeared to be performing the ritual Islamic funeral prayer in a dimly-lit ceremony witnessed by a small crowd of onlookers. The coffins were then taken from the compound and handed to two National Transitional Council loyalists for burial at a secret desert location. The prayers were reportedly attended by two of Gaddafi's cousins, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, once leader of the feared People's Guard, and Ahmed Ibrahim.
Al Ahram says an Egyptian court has sentenced two policemen to seven years in prison for killing activist Khaled Said in June 2010. His death sparked protests and an internet campaign credited with helping to launch the popular uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
Clarin reports former Argentine naval officer Alfredo Astiz has been jailed for life for crimes against humanity during the military rule between 1976 and 1983. Astiz – known as the "Blonde Angel of Death" – was found guilty of torture, murder and forced disappearance. Among his victims were two French nuns and the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group. Ten other former military and police officers were also given life sentences while several others were given shorter sentences.
O Globo says the Brazilian Sports Minister Orlando Silva has resigned after being accused of corruption – the fifth cabinet minister to leave office amid corruption allegations since President Dilma Rousseff took office in January. He has denied accusations that he helped arrange kickbacks worth millions of dollars from a fund to promote sport for poor children. Silva was in charge of preparing for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
The wife of jailed American fraudster Bernard Madoff has revealed she and her husband attempted suicide after his $65 billion pyramid scheme was exposed. Ruth Madoff told the CBS programme “60 Minutes” that each had swallowed a "bunch of pills" on Christmas Eve in 2008 because what was happening to them “was so horrendous”. Madoff is serving a 150-year jail sentence after being convicted in 2009.
Bild newspaper reports that a woman who won €32,000 on the German version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" last Monday, was brought back down to earth the next morning when her boss fired her through text message. The employer reportedly told Friedhild Miller, 42, she did not need the money. Miller has yet to decide whether to sue her former employer. One legal expert told the newspaper the dismissal was "scandalous" and that there was no legal basis for it.
The New York Post reveals that a US airport security agent who found a vibrator in the baggage of transatlantic traveler and then advised her in writing what to do with it, is facing disciplinary action. The US Transportation Security Administration said the handwritten note that lawyer and blogger Jill Filipovic found in her checked luggage was "highly inappropriate and unprofessional". Filipovic tweeted a picture of the note, which read: "Get your freak on girl". She had flown from New York to Dublin to talk about feminism, sexual assault and abortion at Trinity College. On her Feministe website, she recalled another airport experience, a few months ago, when "an agent in Cameroon pulled a tampon out of my bag and manhandled it for a while before smelling it and then asking me what it was".