The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times reports how the government is seeking a gas supply deal for a minimum of five years and not 10 years, as declared before the election.
The Malta Independent says BirdLife is seeking a suspension of the Spring hunting season. It also says the Olaf supervisory committee has questioned Kessler's impartiality
MaltaToday says Olaf investigator Olaf Kessler had no right to carry out interrogations in Malta.
In-Nazzjon says the planned Ghallis waste treatment plant shows how wrong Labour was to claim the Sant Antnin plant would handle all of Malta's waste.
l-orizzont claims Franco Debono was forcibly made to go to parliament and vote for the government four years ago.
The overseas press
National Post reports one of the two men accused of plotting with al-Qaida members in Iran to derail a train in Canada has rejected the charges and said the authorities were basing their conclusions on appearances. Law enforcement officials in the US said the target was a train that runs between New York City and Canada. Canadian investigators say Raed Jaser, 35, and his suspected accomplice Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, received guidance – but no money – from members of al-Qaida in Iran. Iran released a statement saying it had nothing to do with the plot.
El Mundo says Spanish police have arrested two suspected members of al-Qaida’s North African branch. The Interior Ministry say the pair, who have a similar profile to the suspects in the recent attacks in Boston, are suspected members of a cell of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, a branch of al Qaida that operates in north-west Africa. The ministry gave no immediate details as to how their profile was similar to those suspected of carrying out two bomb attacks during the Boston Marathon last week.
Arca Max quotes a federal law enforcement official saying the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect has told FBI agents from his hospital bed that he and his brother were driven to the attack by jihadist radicalism sparked by the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which thousands of Muslims have died. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who lay in a Boston hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, also said that he and his older brother, Tamerlan, learned how to make the pressure cooker bombs used in the attack from a Qaida website. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a police shootout early Friday in which he hurled makeshift explosives at law enforcement officers before he was gunned down.
The Washington Post reports charges of sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama and others were dropped Tuesday against an Elvis impersonator from Mississippi who has said since his arrest last week that he had nothing to do with the case. Meanwhile, in Tupelo, numerous law enforcement officers converged on the home of another Mississippi man, Everett Dutschke, including some in hazmat suits. No charges have been filed against him and he hasn't been arrested. Both men say they have no idea how to make the poisonous ricin and had nothing to do with sending them to Obama, U. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and a state judge.
USA Today says hackers have targeted the main Twitter account of The Associated Press news agency, saying that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama was injured. Within seconds, Wall Street was in panic mode, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average into free-fall and erasing nearly $200 billion off the broader market's value. The Associated Press quickly revealed its Twitter account had been hacked and said the tweet was fake. The White House issued assurances that the president was safe. Traders breathed a sigh of relief, and within minutes, the Dow had erased the hoax-fueled losses and closed up 152 points to 14,719.
Le Parisien reports French lawmakers have legalised same-sex marriage after months of bruising debate and street protests that brought hundreds of thousands to Paris. Tuesday’s 331-225 vote came in the Socialist majority National Assembly. Opponents of the law say France is not ready to legalise adoption for same-sex couples, and polls show a France sharply divided on the issue.
Tripoli Post says a car bomb exploded outside the French Embassy in Tripoli, wounding three people and partially setting the building on fire in the worst attack on a diplomatic mission in the North African nation since the US ambassador was killed last year. The attack in the heart of the capital put new pressure on the Libya's new leaders to rein in the lawlessness that has gripped the country since 2011, when rebels ousted Moammar Gadhafi in a civil war and then refused to lay down their arms.
In an interview with German tabloid Bild, Beppe Grillo, the former comic turned grassroots politician, said he would welcome a German invasion of his country, which he warned was facing bankruptcy this autumn. Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star Movement caused a political earthquake in the February national elections, taking a quarter of the vote to become the largest single parliamentary party. Grillo has contributed to the two-month stalemate since the election by his refusal to enter a coalition with any of Italy's established parties, blaming their corruption and incompetence for Italy's economic and social woes.
Ansa reports six million people are now tracking Pope Francis on his Twitter account @pontifex. The Spanish version is reported to the be the fastest-growing of the nine languages, with 2.046 million followers. The latest of the Argentinian pope's 21 tweets since his election last month was on Tuesday. “Mary is the one who says ‘Yes’. Mary, help us to come to know the voice of Jesus better, and to follow it,” he wrote.
According to Huffington Post, a judge threw out three of eight murder charges in the high-profile trial of an abortion doctor accused of killing babies born alive at a clinic prosecutors described as “a house of horrors”. Dr Kermit Gosnell, 72, still faces the death penalty if convicted on four remaining counts of first-degree murder involving babies he's accused of killing with scissors after they were born alive.
Accra Daily Mail says 120 million condoms, manufactured in China and destined for humanitarian organizations in Ghana, have been found to be defective. A Ghana government spokesman said tests had shown that the condoms had holes and could break. Twenty million condoms have already been distributed for free anti-AIDS campaigns, and the Ghanaian authorities are now trying to recover them.