The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta leads with the imprisonment of an elderly man who raped a young girl. It also reports that suspicion of inside knowledge in the Gaffarena expropriation deal is growing.
The Malta Independent says a 40-year-old mother spends €3,500 on a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs every month. It also says the government is still to name a successor to the ambassador to China after Clifford Borg Marks resigned.
In-Nazzjon leads with the criticism of the government's environment record made by 21 groups. It also says the opposition with fight political intimidation.
l-orizzont says public officials broke directives introduced by the PN when they leaked information during working hours.
The overseas press.
Italian weekly L’Espresso posted Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on the environment to its website yesterday – four days before the eagerly-awaited document is due to be issued. Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said that version of the encyclical was a draft and not the final version, which will be published on Thursday.
La Sicilia says after the defeats in Venice, Arezzo and Matera, Italian Prime Minister’s Democratic Party was dealt another severe blow as the last result of the local elections in Sicily showed that Enna and Gela went to Beppe Grillo’s Movimento di Cinque Stelle.
As some 500 irregular immigrants remain stranded at the Ventimiglia border checkpoint in northwest Italy, after being pushed back from France at the weekend, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve quoted European law which states that the first country migrants reach must process their asylum claims. He told BFM TV “Italy must take care of them.” But his Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano told RAI TV France’s pushback was wrong. “These people want to go Europe, not to Italy.”
Sputnik reports Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry have discussed the crisis in Ukraine in a phone call. A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said they also considered “the situation around Syria, prospects for settling the conflicts in Yemen and Libya as well as the progress of negotiations to reach a final deal over Iran’s nuclear programme and other pressing topics, including issues affecting strategic stability”. The ministry said the call was initiated by the United States.
Sudan Vision says President Omar al-Bashir has arrived in the capital Khartoum after he fled South Africa, avoiding arrest. He is wanted for war crimes during a conflict in the Darfur region, in which about 300,000 people died.
VOA News says Jeb Bush, the son of one president and the brother of another, formally launched his campaign to put a third Bush in the White House by flaunting his experience as a governor and promising to be an inclusive president who “will take nothing and no one for granted”. Speaking at a community college in Miami, the Republican railed against the Washington political establishment and touted his pro-business, small-government record of cutting taxes and using his veto to stop “needless spending” when he ran Florida from 1999 to 2007.
CNN reports a woman who claimed to be black, while heading the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, has resigned her position after her parents publicly confirmed her as Caucasian. Rachel Dolezal had claimed to have had a black father, but her parents from Montana have said that her lineage is largely German and Czech. Dolezal announced her resignation in a Facebook post.
According to Journal du Tchad, 23 people were killed and over 100 injured in twin suicide bombings targeting police in the Chadian capital. The government blamed Boko Haram militants for the bloodshed. They were the first such attacks in N’Djamena, which has been on the frontline of the regional fight against the Nigerian Islamist group. Voice of Nigeria confirmed at least 10 people were killed as Boko Haram struck in the village of Babbangida, where militants used women as a human shield against the army.
Reuters quotes a US study which estimates roughly half of deaths from 12 smoking-related cancers may be linked directly to cigarette use. While the largest number of deaths associated with smoking were for cancers of the lung, bronchus, trachea and larynx, about half of fatalities from tumours of the oral cavity, oesophagus and bladder were also tied to cigarettes, the study found.
An alarming rise in the number of young Iranians who are shunning marriage has prompted unprecedented government action – the launch of a matchmaking website. Press TV was at pains to point out it was not an online dating service. Officials said the “Find Your Equal” website hoped to reverse a surge in numbers, currently 11 million, of young single adults.
If men aspire to become fathers, the right time to have sex is during July and August. The results of an 11-year-old study by Parma’s University Hospital, published in the journal Chronobiology International, show the peak of fertility, with sperm motility greater than 40 per cent, was concentrated in the summer. The percentage drops heavily in winter. It’s a known fact that different weather conditions throughout the year affect the endocrine system, the sleep cycle, the levels of the stress hormone and cholesterol. Eventually all affect sperm motility.