The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times of Malta reports that there have been concerted calls for EU burden sharing after the Lampedusa migrants’ tragedy.
The Malta Independent says Alfred Mifsud ‘would consider’ the post of Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.
In-Nazzjon focuses on yesterday’s debate in Parliament, where Simon Busuttil accused the government of losing its moral compass.
l-orizzont says there is a shortage of 2000 Learning Support Assistants.
The overseas press
Libya Herald reports growing tensions between Libya and the United States over the seizure of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Libi from Tripoli last weekend as the country’s top political authority, the General National Congress, asked Washington to hand him back.
Global growth remains weak and subdued, the International Monetary Fund said in its latest report on the world economic outlook. According to The Wall Street Journal, the IMF cut its global growth forecast due to the slowdown in emerging market economies, especially those of China and India, and to the persistence of downside risks in the medium term. Its forecast for world output in 2013 was cut to 2.9 per cent, compared to 3.2 per cent in July. The global economy is expected to strengthen to 3.6 per cent in 2014, down from the previous 3.8 per cent projection.
Fox News reports the Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner has dismissed President Obama’s position on the fiscal crisis as “not sustainable”, only hours after Obama held a non-press conference to say he was willing to compromise but not negotiate.
Bloomberg announces President Obama will nominate the current vice-chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke, whose term ends next January. Yellen, the first women to lead the US Central Bank, is Obama’s second choice after the other leading candidate, former Treasury secretary and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, withdrew from consideration amid mounting opposition from Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee.
Ansa reports some 120 illegal immigrants have landed at Portopalo di Capo Passero, near Siracusa. They include 28 women and 24 children. Almost all the 112 migrants are Syrians and had crossed the Mediterranean in an old fishing vessel found by Coast Guard boats off southeast Sicily. The seven Egyptians on the boat are suspected of being the people-traffickers.
Bissau Digital says three Nigerians have been lynched by a mob in Guinea-Bissau. The three were believed to have kidnapped a boy in Bissau, the capital of the west African nation. Rumours began to spread and soon a crowd of enraged youths gathered and murdered the three men. This was the second lynching in a week of people suspected of abducting children for organ trafficking.
The Associated Press reports an 89-year-old Indiana man has pleaded guilty in Detroit to serving as a drug mule to distribute more than 635 kilos of cocaine. Leo Sharp is one of the oldest criminal defendants in Detroit's federal court. He told the court he had never before committed a crime and that he worked for drug dealers because he needed money.
RIA Novosti says President Putin has demanded an official apology from the Netherlands after a Russian diplomat was arrested over the weekend. Moscow3 has alleged that armed men entered the diplomat’s home and beat him in front of his children. The Foreign Ministry in The Hague say it ws investigating.
Gulf News reports a court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a self-styled preacher to eight years in prison and 800 lashes for torturing his five-year-old daughter to death. The court also ordered Fayhan Al Gamdi to pay a million Saudi riyals as “blood money” to his ex-wife for killing their daughter Luma. Tamim's second wife was sentenced to 10 months in prison and 150 lashes for failing to report to police his brutal abuse of Luma, who died of a fractured skull and other injuries. The child had been whipped, subjected to electric shocks and branded with a red-hot iron.