The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times quotes a Lockerbie detective saying the US was advised to give $3 million to Maltese witnesses to secure the case. It also reports on the John Dalli report on Mater Dei Hospital, with the former minister urging politicians to keep out of Mater Dei.
MaltaToday says a €4.3m expropriation deal with the owner of the Fekruna restaurant was signed on the eve of the general election.
The Malta Independent on Sunday says a Nigerian was granted protection in Malta because of the persecution of gays in his country.
It-Torca refers to John Dalli’s report, saying the hospital is in an ‘emergency’.
Illum quotes John Dalli saying the health minister’s place is not in the Emergency Department.
Il-Mument claims that Henley and Partners was involved in the funding of the electoral campaigns in various countries.
KullHadd says there were two incidents of emissions in a month at Malta Freeport.
The overseas press
Top diplomats from Iran and six major world powers said early Sunday that an agreement has been reached in Geneva on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. Time reports the interim deal is reportedly not the final say but instead one that will last for six months.
France 24 says United Nations climate talks in Poland have ended with last-minute compromises paving the way to a full climate treaty to be signed in 2015. After 30 hours of continuous negotiations delegates overcame disputes on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and providing aid to help poor nations cope with the effects of climate change.
The BBC announces newly-published research indicates that more than 11,000 children have been killed in nearly three years of civil war in Syria. Summary executions and torture have also been used against children as young as one, the London-based Oxford Research Group think tank says. More than 1,000 children were deliberately targeted by snipers.
Meanwhile, al bawaba says two government airstrikes have killed at least 41 people in the north of Syria. Warplanes targeted rebel positions in an opposition-held district of Aleppo city, but the attack missed the target and slammed into a crowded vegetable market. In a separate airstrike on the town of al-Bab near Aleppo, 15 people were killed.
Baltic Times says Latvia's president has demanded that a supermarket cave-in in Riga, which killed at least 54 people, be treated as murder. All search and investigation work was suspended until this morning after a third section of the supermarket's roof collapsed on Saturday afternoon without causing any injuries. The police said 13 people were still reported missing in the debris. This was Baltic state's worst disaster since independence in 1991 and Europe's third deadliest roof catastrophe in 30 years.
Washington Times reports President Obama has told Americans that the US economy is headed “in the right direction”. Amid the lowest poll numbers of his presidency and a barrage of bad headlines, Obama said 7.8 million new jobs were created in the private sector in the past 44 months, the US auto industry was resurgent and America was on the path to reversing its “addiction to foreign oil”. On his health reform legislation, he said some 500,000 Americans were “poised to gain health coverage starting January 1”.
Voice of Nigeria reports a group of about 30 armed men killed at least 12 people on Saturday during a raid in the village of Sandiya, in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, stronghold of the Boko Haram Islamic fundamentalist group. A local eyewitness said that before opening fire the gunmen cried out “Allahu Akbar”.
Dawn reports that Shekeel Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabbad hideout, has been charged with murder and fraud. A woman has accused Dr Afridi of causing the death in 2007 of her son Sulaiman, who died after a third operation for appendicitis Afridi carried out. Osama bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, in Abbottabbad, 110 kilometres north of Islamabad.
Russia on Saturday took the Olympic flame into its scenic lake Baikal, the world's deepest body of fresh water, in the latest dramatic torch relay ahead of the Sochi Winter Games. RIA Novosti says three divers reaching the bottom of a shallower part of the lake completed a relay handover underwater, after which the flame returned to shore. At its deepest point the lake is 1,642 metres but the divers descended to a depth of 13 metres. The Irkutsk region's town Listvyanka, where the dive took place, currently has temperatures of minus three degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, Ansa reports that Pope Francis has warned against the commercialisation of athletes during meeting of leaders of the Olympic movement. He told 200 members of the European Olympic committees that sport was harmony but if the quest of money and success prevailed then harmony crumbled.