The following are the top stories in the Maltese and international press
The Times says Liquigas has asked the Police Commissioner to investigate whether its competitor, Easygas, is selling gas cylinders without the necessary certification. Easygas is denying the claims. In a story on the power station extension hearing in Parliament, it says that broker Joe Mizzi has denied influencing the decision.
The Independent says that Nationalist MP Franco Debono stands his ground and reports that Transport Minister Austin Gatt had offered his resignation, which was not accepted.
Malta Today also reports on Dr Gatt resignation offer and says that the government’s counter motion to the opposition’s motion of no confidence on Friday will include an apology. In its report on the power station extension hearing, it says that Mr Mizzi claimed to have lost all e-mail correspondence in a computer jam.
l-Orizzont says that the government still has to settle accounts with Palumbo and quotes the Finance Minister saying that the government is to now embark on process to see how much of the money promised has been invested. The newspaper also reports that the European Commission has sent back to the government Air Malta’s restructuring report.
in-Nazzjon says that Transport Malta will become the transport regulator on Friday. It also interviews Yasser Arafat’s widow Suha and reports on the situation in Greece.
The international press
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Greek Cabinet has given unanimous backing to Prime Minister Georges Papandreou’s plans for a pre-Christmas referendum on the country's latest €130 billion bailout package, hammered out by EU leaders in Brussels last week. The decision was taken in a six-hour meeting, after a day of high drama in Athens, where four Socialist party deputies voiced their opposition to the referendum, and one ruling party MP quit the party outright, raising fears that Papandreou might be forced to call early elections. According to Associated Press, Papandreou's government faces a vote of confidence on Friday and a grilling from frustrated European leaders at the Group of 20 summit in the French Riviera starting tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg says the yen advanced against 15 of its 16 major counterparts as renewed speculation that Europe’s debt crisis was worsening boosted moves for safer assets. The yen gained 0.2 per cent to 107.18 per euro in Tokyo, extending a gain from yesterday as Asian stocks extended a global equity slump. Stocks fell broadly across Europe. The Italian stocks were the worst performers among major eurozone markets, diving 6.8 per cent on Tuesday after a 3.8 per cent drop on Monday. The German market lost five per cent, French shares slumped 5.4 per cent and the Spanish market dropped 4.2 per cent.
The Irish Independent quotes a Central Statistics Office spokesman in Dublin saying that the country was no better or worse off as a result of an accounting blunder which raised Ireland's debt by €3.6 billion. The new revised figure confirmed Ireland had a gross debt at the end of 2010 of €144.4 billion (92.6 per cent of GDP), rather than the published €148 billionn (94.9 per cent of GDP). Public Accounts Committee chairman John McGuinness plans to seek a special meeting to discuss the serious accounting error. He said the people needed to know how this occurred, when it was discovered and how it was brought into the public domain.
In what The Jerusalem Post calls “a series of retaliatory moves against the Palestinian Authority”, Israel has decided to accelerate Jewish construction over the pre-1967 lines and temporarily suspend the transfer of tax funds to the PA. The Inner Cabinet’s measures were a direct response to the PA’s continued pursuit of unilateral statehood in favour of a negotiated agreement with Israel. It issued the punitive steps just one day after UNESCO accepted the Palestinian Authority’s bid to become its 195th member. The PA also plans to request membership in other UN agencies. PA’s news agency, Wafa, said the PA immediately condemned the two decisions, warning they would destroy the peace process.
For a world already weary of weather catastrophes, the latest warning from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a grim future: more floods, more heat waves, more droughts and greater costs to deal with them. A draft summary of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press says the extremes caused by global warming could eventually grow so severe that some locations become “increasingly marginal as places to live”.
USA Today reports that Dr Conrad Murray, the doctor accused of killing Michael Jackson, has decided not to take the witness and c losing arguments in the six-week case will begin on Thursday before the jury start their deliberations. A total of 49 witnesses have testified during the 22 days of the trial. Prosecutors say Murray gave Jackson a fatal dose of the anaesthetic propofol in the bedroom of the singer's mansion in June 2009. But the doctor claims the “King of Pop” self-administered the dose when he was out of the room.
MSNBC says Dorothy Rodham, mother of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton's mother-in-law, has died at age 92 after an illness. The family said Rodham died shortly, surrounded by her family at a Washington hospital. The secretary of state had cancelled a planned trip to London and Istanbul to be at her mother's side.
The Washington Times says twin two-year-old girls from the Philippines who were joined at the chest and abdomen have been separated during a lengthy, complex procedure at Stanford University's children's hospital. The operation that gave sisters Angelina and Angelica Sabuco their independence took more than nine hours and a team of more than 40 people, including doctors, nurses and other personnel.
A new study, published in the latest issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that women who routinely have even small amounts of alcohol, as few as three drinks a week, have an elevated risk of breast cancer. The research, which looked at the habits of more than 100,000 women over 30 years, found that roughly 7,700 of the women enrolled developed invasive breast cancer. The study adds to a long line of studies linking alcohol consumption of any kind – whether beer, wine or spirits – to an increased risk of breast cancer.