The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times of Malta reports how the Nylon Knitting firm is to put workers on a four-day week.
The Malta Independent says the prime minister is expected to avoid details on the citizenship scheme at a conference in Miami.
In-Nazzjon reports that the government has run out of free flu vaccines.
l-orizzont says that no records used to be kept of people granted citizenship.
The overseas press
New allegations have emerged that the US National Security Agency was given permission by the British Government to spy on the communications of British citizens, even if they were not suspected of criminal activities. The Guardian and Channel 4 TV say a change in the rules six years ago appears to have allowed the NSA to retain phone, internet and e-mail records of individuals who were not the initial targets of US surveillance operations.
ABC reports a member of hacking group Anonymous Indonesia has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on the websites of the Australian Federal Police and the Reserve Bank. The AFP and the Reserve Bank have confirmed their sites were attacked overnight, though both say the hacker did not gain access to any sensitive information. The attack comes amid a diplomatic row between Australia and Indonesia, sparked by revelations spies tried to tap the phones of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and inner circle.
The French authorities have named a man that they had arrested on suspicion of opening fire at the offices of Liberation newspaper and a bank in Paris. Le Parisien says the DNA of the suspect, Abdelhakim Dekhar, matches samples taken at the scene of the attacks. The man was jailed for four years in 1998 for associating with the far-left militant group that had killed three policemen and a taxi driver.
The first meeting between the Iranian and the P5+1 delegations (the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) ended after five to 10 minutes. Tribune de Genève says that as the negotiations got under way, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed not to back down from exercising Iran’s nuclear “rights” before slamming Israel for trying to “torpedo” the negotiations.
EU Observer says new data on population trends show that the 28-nation European Union grew by one million last year, mainly due to net inward migration. According to the EU’s statistics agency, Eurostat, Germany and Italy were the magnets for migrants. Spain haemorrhaged more than 160,000 people. Ireland had the highest rate of birth. Eurostat put the EU’s total population last year at 505.7 million. Of that, 331 million shared the common zone of the euro currency. Compared to 2011, the EU overall population grew by just 0.2 percent.
Another round of talks between the troika and Greek government officials in Athens has failed to yield any results and, as a result, Greece is due to submit its 2014 budget to Parliament later today without the final approval of its lenders. Kathimerini reports the budget will include a range of measures aimed at producing well over one billion euros in extra savings next year. The fact that the troika did not sign off on the 2014 budget means that a supplementary one may have to be submitted to Parliament early next year.
France and Italy have called for eurozone finance ministers to have a full-time chairman after European Parliament elections in May. France 24 quotes French President François Hollande, speaking after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta in Rome, saying the eurozone needed to complete its banking union and set up a joint borrowing mechanism to finance investment.
VOA reports President Barack Obama has laid a wreath at the gravesite of John F Kennedy as part of a day of events honouring the assassinated president. Mr Obama was joined at Arlington National Cemetery by former president Bill Clinton. The 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination is tomorrow.
The British scientist Frederick Sanger, who twice won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, has died at the age of 95. The BBC says his work into the formation of DNA helped lay the foundations of the decoding of the human geno.
New research suggests that eating nuts significantly reduces the risk of dying from heart disease of cancer. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that a daily handful of nuts cuts death rates by 20 per cent.
Mail & Guardian reports South African Paralympics champion Oscar Pistorius has been formally charged with two extra gun-related offenses. The charges add to those Pistorius already faces over the February 14 killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and illegally possessing ammunition. The new charges relate to two incidents of Pistorius discharging a firearm on two separate occasions before Steenkamp’s death.
Celebrations for Algeria’s victory over Burkina Faso that sent the country’s soccer team to the 2014 World Cup finals left 12 people dead and some 240 injured. Le Matin reports that across Algeria people poured into the streets after the final whistle Tuesday night to celebrate their team’s qualification for the event in Brazil, with young men driving their cars down the streets and honking their horns with abandon. It is the fourth trip to the World Cup for this soccer-mad nation and follows closely on its 2010 appearance in South Africa.