The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta leads with yesterday's car crash in Gozo which left a law student dead. Separately, it also reports about a jump in the number of motorists caught speeding.
The Malta Independent says a court will decide in a week’s time whether the Spring hunting referendum should go ahead.
In-Nazzjon reports that a girl, 14, missing since December 18, turned up at a police station in Qawra yesterday.
l-orizzont focuses on the life of a boy who spent 10 months on hospital treatment in the UK.
The overseas press
France 24 reports a specialist black box search team from France is joining the international effort to find the AirAsia flight which went down with 162 people on board on Sunday. Nine bodies have so far been recovered from the water off Borneo, but an aviation official said it could be a week before the black box flight recorders were found.
Xinhua says Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered an immediate investigation into a New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai that killed at least 36 people. Police have denied reports that the incident was caused by people rushing to pick up fake money thrown from a nearby building.
Avvenire reports Pope Francis has urged people of all religions and cultures to unite to fight modern slavery and human trafficking. In his first mass of 2015, which marked the World Day of Peace, he said everyone had a God-given right to be free.
The Daily Telegraph leads with the finding of a new study which says most types of cancer are the result of “bad luck” rather than genes, environment or life-style. US scientists looked at 31 different types of cancer and found that two-thirds were caused by random cell divisions. Each division risks a dangerous mutation which can lead to cancer. Improvements in the environment and life-style does help in diseases such as skin and lung cancers.
Haaretz says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the International Criminal Court to reject the Palestinian request to join it, saying the Palestinian Authority was not a state but “an entity, aligned with the terrorist organisation Hamas”. Netanyahu, who was re-elected leader of the right-wing Likud party yesterday, vowed to “defend Israel’s soldiers”.
Metro quotes the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying 33,278 of the 76,021 people killed in Syria in 2014 were civilians. Last August, the UN estimated the total number of people killed since the start of the conflict at 191,000 but activists say the actual figure is likely much higher.
Meanwhile, Al Ayyam says violence in Iraq has killed more than 15,000 civilians and security personnel in 2014 – making it one of the deadliest years since the 2003 US-led invasion. The toll for 2014 was also more than double the 6,522 people killed in 2013.
O Globo says Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has been sworn into her second term in office, promising to boost education and security. In a 40-minute inaugural speech, she sharply defended her record, noted the great strides Brazil had made in social inclusion with her government programmes and said she was ready to fight graft and end impunity for the rich and powerful.
Ansa quotes the Italian coast guard saying a crew-less merchant ship carrying 450 migrants lost power as it headed towards the Italian coast. A helicopter was sent to lower men on to the Sierra Leone-registered “Ezadeen”. One of the people on board was able to operate the ship’s radio and informed the coastguard that the crew had jumped ship. Almost 1,000 migrants were rescued from another ship found abandoned without any crew earlier in the week.
The New York Times pays tribute to former veteran US politician Mario Cuomo who died, aged 92. He had served three times as governor of New York, from 1983 to 1994. A popular democrat he was known for his strong liberal views among them against the death penalty and in favour of gun control.
Asia Today sasys a South Korean activist plans to launch a series of balloons across the border into North Korea carrying 100,000 copies of the controversial movie “The Interview”. Former defector Park Sang-Hak said the balloons would carry DVDs and USB memory sticks possibly later this month.
The Times of Israel reports a flight from New York to Tel Aviv was delayed by 30 minutes last week after a group of male ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women – the third such incident in recent months.