The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta says Hibs' bid for rapist player Ched Evans has been stopped after the UK Justice Minister said Evans may not play abroad after his conviction.
MaltaToday says Controlled rents are to increase.
The Malta Independent on Sunday reports that a government-appointed commission had recommended a doubling of the PM's salary and full time MPs.
It-Torca quotes the Hibs president, saying society was being hypocritical in saying it wanted to give criminals a second chance after serving their sentence, but then wanting to ban Evans.
Il-Mument says 80 people are losing their jobs after Air Malta's decision to reduce its catering service.
Illum also leads with the Ched Evans controversy.
KullHadd says the foreign assets declaration scheme has revealed €456 million
The overseas press
The Jerusalem Post quotes Israeli officials saying the government has decided to freeze the monthly transfer of tax revenue to the Palestinians, worth €106 million. The decision came a day after the Palestinians pressed ahead with an application to join the International Criminal Court. The funds are from taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians and are crucial to the activities of the PA, including paying civil servants’ salaries. Al Ayyam quotes a Palestinian official calling the Israeli move as “an illegal collective punishment”.
According to a report in Der Spiegel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is prepared to let Greece quit the eurozone, should the people elect a government that abandoned austerity. Berlin is increasingly convinced a “Grexit” would be bearable. The January 25 general election could see the opposition party Syriza achieve victory, as polls predict.
Meanwhile, Kathimerini says Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras has said his party’s victory would start “necessary change” in Europe and stressed he would end austerity policies. Tsipras, whose party has led by between three and six points in the polls, has vowed to reverse the reforms insisted upon by Greece’s international creditors, which include the EU and International Monetary Fund.
CNN reports search teams hunting for the wreck of AirAsia flight QZ8501 are focusing their efforts on four large objects found on the seabed off the coast of Borneo, as the search for bodies continues. A multi-national task force of ships, planes and helicopters have been scouring the northern Java Sea and coastline of southern Borneo to recover the bodies of victims and locate the wreck and its black box flight recorders.
Ansa reports the Syrian migrants on board the cargo ship Ezadeen have told Italian authorities they paid between €3,300 and €6,600 each to cross the Mediterranean with the smugglers netting some €2.5 million from the operation. The ship was left crewless heading towards the Italian coast. Over 350 people, all of “certain economic means” had been flown from Lebanon to Turkey, from where they set sail on December 31. On arriving in Italy the migrants, all of them from Syria, were taken to shelters around the country.
AFP quotes a Libyan government source who said that members of the Ansar al-Shariah militia had kidnapped 13 Egyptian Coptic Christians in the coastal city of Sirte. The source also said seven others had been taken in recent days. Egyptian authorities have warned the Christians in Libya to stay indoors.
ABC reports cooler conditions were helping hundreds of firefighters working to contain a massive wildfire that had forced thousands of people to flee their homes in southern Australia. A dozen homes have been destroyed by the fire in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, with another 20 also feared lost, state Premier Jay Weatherill said. Twenty-two people have been injured, though none seriously, Weatherill said.
Hurriyet says that for the first time in over 90 years, Turkey has permitted the construction of a new Christian church. Since the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, only renovations of existing churches had been allowed.
A US lawyer says he is planning legal action against a woman who claims she was forced to have sex with him and Prince Andrew when she was a minor. Alan Dershowitz told the BBC he wanted her claims to be made under oath. He and the Duke of York were named in documents filed in a Florida court over how prosecutors handled a case against financier Jeffrey Epstein. Buckingham Palace has denied the woman’s claims that she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew.
Meanwhile, The Mirror reveals Virginia Roberts, the now 29-year-old mother of three who claims she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York, says she was paid £10,000 after being in bed with him. The sum was paid by the American banker Jeffrey Esptein. The latter only sexually abused the woman between 1999 and 2002, when he had not yet turned 18, but had also “given” her to a few friends, including the Duke of York.