The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times reports how Tonio Fenech will sue Evarist Bartolo over his claim that he had received a €5,000 gift from oil trader George Farrugia. It also reports how two businessmen were arraigned over the oil scandal.
The Malta Independent reports how two were charged yesterday with corruption and money laundering.
MaltaToday says yesterday was Revelations day as the PN and PL traded claims.
l-orizzont leads with the claim by Evarist Bartolo that Tonio Fenech received a gift worth over €5000 from George Farrugia soon after he became minister responsible for oil.
In-Nazzjon says the financial administrator of the Labour Party ‘is behind the oil scandal’. It also reports on the other two arraignments in the oil procurement scandal yesterday.
The overseas press
Mail & Guardian reports “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius, facing trial for having shot dead his girlfriend, hopes to secure bail later today as prosecutors struggled to regain lost ground after the replacement of the lead officer in the investigation, Hilton Botha, after local media revealed he faced seven attempted murder charges for having opened fire on a minibus in 2011.The charges were initially dropped, but were reinstated 10 days before Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his Pretoria home. The Olympic athlete denies the murder charges, claiming he mistook the 29-year-old victim for an intruder.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, has warned Italians not to vote for Silvio Berlusconi. In 2003, Berlusconi provoked uproar in the EU parliament when he invited Schulz to appear in a film as a Nazi camp guard. Speaking to the German Bild newspaper, Schulz said Berlusconi had already sent Italy into a tailspin, with irresponsible government action. And he warned that the confidence Italy had gained through outgoing Premier Mario Monti should not be gambled away.
Ansa quotes the regional public prosecutor of the Audit Court Antonio Caruso saying that the “scourge” of corruption in the Lombardy region was disconcerting and worse than it was 20 years ago. As many as 62 regional councillors in the northern Lombardy region have been under investigation in various probes by prosecutors, most dealing with misuse of public funds. These investigations follow a series of corruption probes that led Governor Roberto Formigoni to dissolve his executive in October. Formigoni is suspected of wrongdoing related to health-sector contracts in one of those cases. He denies any wrongdoing.
The New York Times says that the UN has formally rejected claims for a compensation for victims of a cholera break in Haiti that has killed some 8,000 people. The UN says it is immune from such claims. Here is growing evidence that cholera was introduce into Haiti through a UN peacekeeper-base’ leaking sewage pipes.
Al Ahram reports Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has called parliamentary elections beginning in the last week of April. Analysts say Morsi hopes the election would put an end to increasing local opposition and street protests.
According to Syrian TV, a car bomb in central Damascus has killed 53 people and wounded more than 200 others. Most of the victims in the Mazraa district had been civilians, possibly including children from a nearby school.
CNN reports the United States has warned Iran that the installation of next-generation centrifuges at one of its main nuclear plants, as reported by the UN atomic agency, would be a “provocative step”. And Haartez quotes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office saying Iran is “closer than ever” to the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
The government in Venezuela says ailing President Hugo Chavez was still suffering breathing problems more than two months after he had a fourth round of cancer surgery. El Universal quotes the communications minister saying Chavez was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas where he was taken after returning from Cuba.
Tens of millions of people in 24 US states are expected to be affected by the storm before it peters out when it reaches the Great Lakes on Friday or Saturday. USA Today reports that the storm was pulling a second system up from the Gulf of Mexico that was expected to smother parts of the East Coast with up to 60 centimetres of snow. The National Weather Service said as much as 43 centimetres of snow had fallen in parts of Colorado and Kansas by Thursday afternoon. Other areas from Oklahoma to Ohio were expected to get between six and 18 inches by the time the storm blows over.
A penguin that was stranded on a beach in New Zealand – thousands of kilometres from its Antarctic home – has died. Dominion Post says the Royal Penguin. dubbed Happy Feet Jr, was given five days of intensive care at a Wellington zoo but failed to recover from the malnutrition it was suffering after an estimated 12 months lost at sea.
A French author has written in graphic detail about her eight-month affair with disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, calling the relationship “field work” for a controversial new book. AFP reports that the book, by Argentinean-born Marcela Iacub, a columnist with the left-wing daily Liberation, was denounced by Strauss-Kahn and the wife he has separated from, journalist Anne Sinclair. In “Beauty and the Beast”, due to be released next week, Iacub says she had a relationship with Strauss-Kahn from January to August 2012, in the midst of the scandal over accusations he sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid. She doesn't name Strauss-Kahn in the book, but she told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine that it was about him. She calls the main character “half-man, half-pig”, though she considers the word pig a compliment.