The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times says the resignation of Richard Cachia Caruana was met with surprise and disbelief at the weekly meeting of the EU’s Permanent Representatives in Brussels, which was preparing for next week’s crucial summit meeting.
The Malta Independent quotes an Opposition Cypriot MP saying in the Nicosia parliament that Chinese investors are eyeing Malta for a €600m project. The investors had been considering converting an old airport in Cyprus into a major establishment but the project got bogged down in bureaucracy.
In-Nazzjon leads with the development of the Family Park in Marsascala.
l-orizzont refers to comments by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando that he has some SMS messages from Nationalist MPs who told him they wished to vote against the Cachia Caruana motion.
Press digest
Global funding costs are set to rise after the credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded some of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions. The Wall Street Journal quotes the agency saying it was concerned about their exposure to increased volatility in the markets. The 15institutions are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan(US), Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC (UK), Credit Suisse, UBS, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Morgan Stanley. The downgrades range in scope from one notch to three notches depending on the particular institution. HSBC was downgraded by one notch.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde has called on the leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro to tie their economies much more closely if they wanted to tackle the crisis affecting them. Tageblatt says she urged them to consider jointly issuing bonds, aiding troubled banks directly and perhaps relaxing strict austerity conditions on countries that have received aid – all measures that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the eurozone's largest and most powerful economy, has resisted. Speaking after a meeting in Luxembourg of the eurozone finance ministers, Lagarde said the IMF had found the situation in Europe to be dire.
The Guardian reports Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has warned that there was no room for failure between single currency's big four countries. The Italian leader will today hold talks in Rome with Chancellor Merkel, French President François Hollande, and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, in the hope that they could pave the way for a breakthrough at next week's summit in Brussels.
Spain has announced that independent auditors had found that its banks would need up to €62 billion to protect themselves from financial shocks. Börzen Zeitung says that speaking after the eurogroup meeting, Claude Juncker the president of the eurogroup of finance ministers, said the other ministers had invited Spain to pursue a clear and ambitious strategy, which needed to be implemented swiftly and communicated early. By Monday, Spain was expected to make a formal request for financial assistance to bail out its teetering banks.
According to Kathimerini, also on Monday, the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank – the so-called "troika" overseeing Greece's bailout – would send representatives to Greece to begin a review of the country's progress in reforming its budget. Some European officials have said that a loosening of the harsh budgetary requirements that have sent Greece's economy into a downward spiral could be considered.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the European Court of Justice has ruled that workers who become ill during their holidays have the right to take additional paid time off later. The court ruling, made after an appeal by a Spanish trade union, is binding on all EU members. The Luxembourg-based court insisted that employers should honour workers’ rights to both time off sick and paid holidays. Previously, the court had said that people who were sick before their holiday started could take their leave at another time.
ABC says fighting in Syria yesterday has killed 170 people, as the regime in Damascus denounced a fighter pilot who defected to Jordan as a "traitor". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the number of dead –104 civilians, 54 soldiers and 10 rebel fighters – was the highest since a widely-ignored ceasefire came into effect. Meanwhile, Jordan granted political asylum to Colonel Hassan Merei al-Hamade hours after he landed at a military air base in the kingdom in the first such air force defection in the 15-month revolt against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime. Syrian state television quoted the country’s defence ministry as sayingthe pilot was considered “a deserter and a traitor to his country”.
Jakarta Globe reports an Indonesian militant accused of helping to build a massive car bomb used in the deadly 2002 Bali nightclub attacks has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Known as “Demolition Man,” Umar Patek is a leading member of the al-Qaida-linked network Jemaah Islamiyah. Patek is the last main suspect in the October 12, 2002 Bali resort island attacks that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and seven Americans.
The Washington Times quotes a US State Department report saying that the harassment of American diplomats by the Pakistani government has increased dramatically and has reached a point where it was significantly impairing the work of its embassy and consulates. The report said interference reached new levels of intensity, following the US raid on a compound housing Osama Bin Laden and it worsened still further after a Nato airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
Tribune de Genève says the World Health Organisation is warning of an alarming rise in the illegal trade in human organs, saying around 10 percent of transplant procedures involve organs that have been bought on the black market. The latest estimates show that organ traffickers are exploiting poor people in China, India and Pakistan to cash in on the rising international demand for replacement kidneys. Much of the demand for organs comes from citizens of developed countries.