The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press
The Times reports there were no conclusions as Lawrence Gonzi met Franco Debono briefly at Castille yesterday. The prime minister reportedly said he wants things to be clarified up to the end of the legislature.
The Malta Independent quotes the prime minister saying he will not try to reach temporary solutions to the current political crisis. It also quotes Joseph Muscat saying that Labour is ready to assume responsibilities.
In-Nazzjon quotes the prime minister saying the government is clinging to the confidence of the people, not power.
l-orizzont carries a big picture of Joseph Muscat and his wife at the PL general conference under the heading "Towards a new era".
The overseas press
2012 could easily bring a deep recession and widespread bank failures in Europe, according to the latest quarterly Business Outlook from Deloitte Access Economics titled "Eurogeddon". ABC quotes Deloitte director Chris Richardson saying however the region should just manage to muddle through. "The money that the European Central Bank is pumping out is working very effectively as sticky tape," Richardson said. "It is going to the banks, but the banks in turn are passing indirectly some of it back to governments and that combination is holding Europe together." Meanwhile, EU finance ministers begin a two-day meeting in Brussels today to review the eurozone situation.
Croatia has voted in favour of joining the European Union in 2013. Vjesnik quotes the state electoral commission saying that with almost 99 per cent of votes counted, 66 per cent had ticked 'Yes' to becoming the bloc's 28th member. Turnout was 44 per cent of eligible voters, but there was no binding minimum for the referendum to be deemed valid.
According to Ansa, divers have found another woman's body in the Costa Concordia cruise wreck off the coast of Italy, raising the death toll to 13, as families of the missing attended a remembrance mass nine days after the tragedy struck. The head of Italy's protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, had said earlier that divers were looking for 20 people officially missing, but there might have been people on board who were not on crew or passengers lists. Relatives of a Hungarian woman have claimed she rang them from the ship, but authorities have no official record that she was on board.
Al Ahram reports the Arab League has called on the Syrian authorities to form a national unity government within two months to include the opposition. The league also reiterated its demands that both sides end the bloodshed. Earlier, Saudi Arabia said it was pulling out of the league's monitoring mission in Syria because Damascus had broken promises on peace initiatives.
Saana Radio says Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was heading to the United States for medical treatment, after a farewell speech in which he asked forgiveness from the people he has ruled for 33 years. The 69-year-old president left just a day after the Yemeni parliament approved a law granting him complete immunity from prosecution. Thousands of Yemenis protested on Sunday against Mr Saleh's immunity and demanded he be put on trial for the death of hundreds of mainly young protesters killed in Yemen since protests against Saleh's autocratic rule broke out in January of last year.
Corriere della Sera reports Northern League leader Umberto Bossi has called on former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to boycott what he called "the infamous Monti government". Speaking at the party's rally in Milan, Bossi claimed that Berlusconi and the Democratic Party were joining forces to draft an electoral law that might damage his party. He warned Berlusconi he must choose: "either you make this infamous government fall, or the Northern League will make Lombardy's regional government fall".
The New York Times quotes Human Rights Watch saying Iraq was falling back into authoritarianism and headed towards becoming a police state. The criticism, which Iraq's government quickly disputed, came less than a year after thousands of Iraqis took to the streets nationwide to criticise the government for poor services. In its annual report, Human Rights Watch noted that Iraq remained one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, that women's rights remained poor and that civilians continue to pay a heavy toll in bomb attacks.
Al Jazeera says security sources in Afghanistan believe a video of US Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters contributed to the killings of four French soldiers in eastern Afghanistan. The four soldiers were killed and 15 others were wounded when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them after a training session at a base in Kapisa, north-east of Kabul. In his initial confession, the gunman said he was strongly motivated to kill the soldiers after he saw the video.
The Arizona Herald reports that a year after being shot in the head at point-blank range by a gunman, Gabrielle Giffords said she would step down from US Congress to focus on her recovery. Among the six dead in the January 2011 rampage were a federal judge, a nine-year-old girl and a member of the congresswoman's staff.
US Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has told Fox News he would release recent tax returns for 2010 and an estimate for 2011. Romney appeared embarrassed during the South Carolina campaign by the issue of how much tax he paid – 15 per cent.. Thought to be worth between $190 and $250 million, Romney lives mainly on income from his investments, for which only 15 per cent tax is payable.
Sri Lanka has reportedly ordered 161 foreign Muslim preachers to leave the country for flouting visa regulations. A senior immigration official told Lakbima that the clerics had no right to preach in mosques because they had arrived on tourist visas. The preachers - from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Maldives and Arab nations - must now leave by 31 January
The Hindu says British author Salman Rushdie has accused Indian police of making up an underworld plot to assassinate him, that forced him to pull out of a literary festival in Rajasthan over the weekend, to avoid controversy. Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses", which is banned in India, is seen by many Muslims worldwide as a blasphemous work that insults their religion. Authorities in Jaipur denied Rushdie's accusations.