The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports how a worker was buried in a roof collapse on a construction site at the Seabank Hotel yesterday.
The Malta Independent says the Fiscal Pact is to be entrenched in the Constitution. It also gives details about the collapse at the Seabank Hotel yesterday.
MaltaToday says yesterday's Seabank accident exposed workers' vulnerability.
In-Nazzjon reports how a worker was trapped in the ruins of a collapsed nightclub. It also features comments by the prime minister that a PN-led council would return respect to the people of Mosta.
l-orizzont says spending on education is being reduced by €7.6m as part of the government's cutbacks.
The overseas press
ABC reports that tribal leaders and militia commanders in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi have declared their oil-rich region to be semi-autonomous. They say eastern Libya, known as Cyrenaica, had been neglected for decades, and would now be a state in a federal country. About 3,000 delegates at a congress in Benghazi installed Ahmed al-Senussi, a relative of Libya's former king and a political prisoner under ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi, as head of the new council. Libya's interim rulers have rejected the demand, promoting a decentralised model for the recently liberated country.
The Financial Times says that the US and five other world powers have agreed to reopen talks with Iran on its nuclear programme in a move seen by many diplomats as a last chance to forge a negotiated solution to the crisis and avoid an air strike by Israel. The announcement that the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany plan to meet Iran helped push down the price of oil up to two per cent, sending Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly below $122 a barrel for the first time in a week. The news came after Tehran gave permission for inspectors to visit a site suspected of secret atomic work. The US and its allies believe Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Tehran denies that, insisting that its programme is for peaceful purposes.
CNN reports that Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were locked in a tight battle for the key state of Ohio, as Super Tuesday results poured in. Romney was projected to win contests in Massachusetts, Virginia and Vermont, while Santorum was forecast to win Tennessee and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich declared victory in Georgia. Also voting were Idaho, North Dakota and Alaska. The eventual nominee will challenge Barack Obama in November's election.
According to CBS News, a court in Houston has found the disgraced Texas financier Allen Stanford guilty of swindling more than $7 billion from some 30,000 investors from 100 countries in a huge fraud over 20 years. He was convicted Tuesday on all but one of the 14 counts. He faces up to 20 years for the most serious charges against him, but could spend longer if the judge orders the sentences to be served consecutively instead of concurrently.
The New York Times reports six computer hackers who attacked websites in the United States and over countries have been arrested and charged after their ringleader became an FBI informant. The hackers allegedly belong to the group Anonymous and its networks.
AFP quotes sources saying 72-year-old Jean-Claude Mas, founder of the French breast implant company at the heart of a global health scar, has been was jailed after failing to pay his bail. In January he was charged with causing "involuntary injuries" but released on a €100,000-bail. Mas is the founder of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which shut down in 2010 after it was revealed to have been using substandard, industrial-grade silicone gel.
The Scotsman reports that since Scotland introduced a ban on smoking in public places in 2006 there has been a 10 per cent drop in the country's premature birth rate. Researchers believe this is a smoke-free benefit that could be chalked up alongside others, like reductions in heart disease and childhood asthma. Tobacco smoke has been linked to poor foetal growth and placenta problems. Scotland was the first country in the UK to ban smoking in public places.
Eurasia Net says Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has endorsed a "code of conduct" issued by an influential council of clerics which allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances and encourages segregation of the sexes. Activists say this represents a giant step backwards for women's rights in the country. Gains made by women since 2001 may be lost in the process. Karzai insisted the document was in keeping with Islam and did not restrict women.
Entertainment Inquirer announces the death in London of Robert B Sherman, the composer of the Mary Poppins song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other Disney classics. He was 86. New York-born Sherman and his brother Richard worked as staff composers for Disney between 1960 and 1973, during which time they wrote more than 200 songs for 27 films and two dozen television productions. These included Chim Chim Cher-ee, another hit from 1964's Mary Poppins, which won them an Oscar for best song. They also won the Academy Award for best score for the movie. They were also responsible for hits such as It's a Small World and I Wan'na Be Like You from The Jungle Book, and composed the scores for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Charlotte's Web among others.