The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports how a Dane posed as a doctor to get his hands on women.
The Malta Independent quotes Lawrence Gonzi telling a parliamentary committee yesterday that attempts to implicate familiarity between him and the Farrugias involved in the oil procurement scandal were malicious.
In-Nazzjon says the mobile home used as a police station in Marsascala was not covered by a Mepa permit.
l-orizzont highlights complaints by prison guards about poor working conditions.
The overseas press
The family of the leader of the Libyan jihadist Ansar al Sharia, Mohammed al Zahawi, have confirmed his death to Al Quds al Arabi. They say he was injured during the clashes in Benghazi and died in hospital without coming out of a coma.
Le Monde reports French President François Hollande has used the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to call for states and big business to work together in the fight against terrorism.
The new Charlie Hebdo editor, the cartoonist Riss, has told Europe 1 radio that “probably there won’t be a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed in the next issue of the French satirical magazine”. Riss took the helm after the terrorist massacre of the organ’s staff.
Meanwhile, Le Parisien quotes the National Observatory Against Islamophobia saying the number of anti-Muslim incidents in France has soared since the Charlie Hebdo attack. In its most recent report, the Muslim watchdog said 33 acts against mosques and 95 threats had been reported to authorities.
Euronews says that four opinion polls in Greece had the conservative New Democracy Party trailing the leaders Syriza by a widening margin of between three and six percent ahead of Sunday’s election.
Asharq Al Awsat says Saudi Arabia’s new leader, King Salman, has pledged no major changes to the path charted by his brother, King Abdullah, who passed away yesterday.
The Washington Post says the US Supreme Court is stepping into the issue of lethal injection executions for the first time since 2008 in an appeal filed by death row inmates in Oklahoma. The justices agreed to review whether the sedative “midazolam” can be used in executions because of concerns that it does not produce a deep, coma-like unconsciousness and ensure that a prisoner does not experience intense and needless pain when other drugs are injected to kill him.
AGI reports the US delegation to Havana – led by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, the highest-ranking American diplomat to visit the island in 35 years – has met several Cuban dissidents.
Avvenire quotes Pope Francis saying the perfect family “doesn’t exist” and households should learn from “conflicts” while avoiding being a battleground for “ideological” clashes. The pontiff was conveying his message for the 49th World Communications Day, the theme of which this year was “Communicating the Family”. The family, said the pope, should become a “school for forgiveness”.
Clarin says the Argentine authorities have suspended 10 bodyguards of the prosecutor Alberto Nisman – who died on Sunday under suspicious circumstances – and have them subjected to disciplinary investigation of possible negligence or omission. Nisman died after accusing the president Cristina Kirchner of plotting to ensure the impunity of Iranian officials accused by the anti-Jewish attack in 1994 that caused 85 deaths in Buenos Aires.
Times of India says Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a national campaign to end the killing every day of 2,000 between newborn and female foetuses in India – the drama that generated in the country an alarming imbalance between males and females. He said it time to convince families to put an end to this “terrible practice”. In India, the male to female ratio is 918 women per 1,000 men, and that in some districts down to 775 against 1,000.
ABC News reports Kathy Beitz, who has been legally blind since she was 11 years old, got to see her newborn on the day he was born by wearing special glasses. In a YouTube video that is quickly going viral, she gasps and says “Oh my god!” as she holds baby Aksel in her hospital bed for the first time. Beitz, 29, suffers from a kind of macular degeneration. Though she is not completely blind, she has a blind spot in the centre of her vision. She looked at her baby through specialty glasses called eSight Eyewear which cost $15,000. (See her joy on http://abcnews.go.com/Health/video/moment-blind-mom-sees-baby-time-28441962)