The following are the top stories in the local and international press today.
The Times leads with Air Malta’s rebranding which will see the airline's planes decked in bright red, yellow, blue and green as part of an exercise costing almost €2 million. In another story it says plans are underway to boost freedom of expression by making it more difficult for the police to prosecute artists. The newspaper also celebrates Andrew Chetcuti’s achievement in the Olympics which saw him setting a new national record.
The Malta Independent also reports on Air Malta’s rebranding exercise. It quotes Peter Davies saying that initial results being obtained by the airline seem encouraging. In another story, the newspaper reports on the subsidies being given to encourage the public to buy an electric car.
Malta Today quotes Nationalist MP Franco Debono appealing to PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier to stop making the PN look like a fool by requesting financial assistance from the people for its billboards. Dr Debono also called on the PN executive to discipline Minister Joe Cassar.
l-Orizzont says that the price of milk and petrol goes up today. The newspaper quotes GWU general secretary Tony Zarb saying the people should be given back the day off that had been taken away from them for public holidays falling on Saturdays and Sundays. In another story, the newspaper says that the father of Polina Rahman, the Russian girl whose body was found a week ago, was not convinced his daughter had died in an accident.
In-Nazzjon reports on the members of the selection boards for the appointment of consultant surgeons and accuses Labour leader Joseph Muscat of making serious allegations which had come back to haunt him as one of the appointees was a PL candidate.
The international press
France 24 reports French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti have said their governments were "determined to do everything” to protect the euro, and praised the recent progress in the debt debacle. Monti said on Italian radio before meeting Hollande the eurozone was nearing the end of its debt crisis, and that "there's light at the end of the tunnel".
Plovdiv Radio quotes Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov announcing that pensions in Bulgaria would be raised by between seven and 10 per cent as of next year. And as of today, public sector workers would have their salaries increased by 20 per cent on average.
Meanwhile, El Pais says Catalonia, Spain's most indebted region, has said it could not pay subsidies to hospitals, old age homes and other social services already reeling from sharp budget cuts. The Catalan regional government's economy ministry said the problem was due to lack of liquidity and expected the situation would start to return to normal in September.
A US judge has ordered al-Qaida, the Taliban and Iran to pay $6 billion (€4.88 million) to relatives of the September 11 victims for aiding in the 2001 terror attacks in New York. The ruling is largely symbolic since it would be nearly impossible to collect any damages. But plaintiff Ellen Saracini told New York’s Daily News that she was happy about the ruling. Her husband, Victor, was the captain of one of the two planes that struck the World Trade Centre. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has denied any Iranian connection in the attacks.
Al Arabiya quotes rebel fighters converging on the city of Aleppo saying they were gaining the upper hand against Syrian government forces. Rebels have been badly out-gunned in the city, and for days have been clashing with pro-Assad forces backed by artillery and helicopter gunships. Government forces have said they were slowly clearing rebels out of the city, but the rebels say they were the ones making progress.
Meanwhile, AFP reports that an amateur video posted on YouTube showed members of the rebel Free Syrian Army execute regime loyalists in Aleppo. The face of one of the captives was covered in blood, and he had been stripped almost naked, as rebels stood him against a wall together with other captives. The rebels then opened a torrent of fire on their captives, identified as members of a tribe that entered the fighting on Tuesday in Aleppo on the side of the regime.
Fiji's online media site FijiVillage reports that the country’s last democratically elected Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, could face years in jail, after being found guilty of nine charges corruption, including six of abuse of office . The charges relate to his time as a company director in the 1990s, before he was prime minister. He is likely to be barred from contesting elections slated for 2014. Sentencing submissions begin today.
All India Radio says power has returned to much of northern India after a massive blackout for a second straight day left an estimated 600 million people without electricity. The outage caused major transport disruption and traffic chaos in several cities, trapped miners, stranded train commuters and plunged hospitals into darkness. Twenty of India's 28 states, including the capital Delhi, were believed to have been affected..
Business Week reports UBS claimed today that the botched stock market listing of social networking giant Facebook cost it 349 million Swiss francs (€290 million). The Zurich-based banking group blamed the loss on the “gross mishandling” of the flotation by Nasdaq, which involved a series of technical errors that caused a delay in the start of trading of Facebook shares last May. The problems ultimately led to UBS receiving more shares than its clients had ordered, the bank said, which are now worth around $23, compared to their initial price of $38.
Pravda reports one of president Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, Alexei Navalny, has been charged with theft and faces a 10-year prison sentence. The State Investigative Committee said that it suspects Navalny of organising a scheme to steal assets from a state timber company. The 36-year-old anti-corruption crusader and popular blogger has rejected the charges as “weird” and baseless.
Ansa says a €25 million restoration of the Colosseum was expected begin in December and take two-and-a-half years, during which time the monument will remain open to tourists. The restoration also aims to make more of the monument accessible. The ancient Roman arena has been blackened by pollution and rocked by vibrations from a nearby subway line and car traffic for years.
According to Le Parisien, the legendary Ritz in the heart of Paris has closed for 27 months of renovation works estimated at a cost of €140 million. The hotel has, in the past, hosted such names as Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen and Kate Moss. It is now owned by Egyptian Mohammed Al-Fayed and it was from there that his son Dodi and Princess Diana had left on their last fatal car journey on August 31, 1997
The Guardian says Michael Phelps has became the most decorated athlete in Olympic history when his gold in the 4x200 metres freestyle relay took him to 19. The 27-year-old had equalled Larisa Latynina’s 1964 record earlier in the evening with silver in the 200 metres butterfly. Since winning his first medal – a bronze at the Athens Games in 2004 – Phelps has won a total of 15 gold, two silver and two bronze Olympic medals. Four years ago in Beijing, he set the record for most golds at a single Olympics with eight.
The Mail reports that history had already been made once at the Olympics on Tuesday when Queen Elizabeth's equestrian granddaughter Zara Phillips put her name in the record books earlier in the day by becoming the first member of the British royal family to win an Olympic medal. She claimed a silver as part of the British team. Her mother, Princess Anne, a 1976 Olympic equestrian, draped the medal around her neck.
International Olympic Committee and British Olympic Association officials have defended 16 year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen against doping allegations, after a top US coach called her record-breaking victory “suspicious”. FINA president Julio Maglione told Associated Press suspicions that she had taken drugs were "crazy'' and motivated by jealousy. The IOC stressed its confidence in the drug-testing programme.