The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
The Sunday Times of Malta says that as beachgoers screamed in shock when the rope connecting two British paragliders to a speedboat snapped in a sudden storm yesterday, all Anthony Nisbet could think about was how he and his sister could land safely. In another story it says controversial plans to turn the Carmelite priory garden in Balluta into a supermarket are being strongly opposed by the Archbishop, who is not ruling out legal proceedings to stop the development.
MaltaToday says National Bank shareholders are claiming €325 million in compensation. It also says former PN general secretary Joe Saliba purchased a Paceville block with Gaffarena in 2008.
It-Torca says that PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami was Mark Gaffarena's lawyer in three judicial cases.
Il-Mument publishes the Public Service Commission’s disciplinary board report on the shooting in Gzira involving the former Home Affairs Minister’s driver.
The Malta Independent on Sunday says accountant Joe Sammut has been running a full service Maltese visa and residency operation, predominantly for Libyan clients, out of his Mosta office.
Illum speaks to a police inspector who says a person can collect drugs at sea and no one would know anything about it.
Kullhadd says a third of patients at Mater Dei Hospital did not received the required rehabilitation between 2008 and 2013 because of a lack of facilities.
International news
China Daily reports authorities have evacuated more than 250,000 people and 32,000 fishing boats in the Southeast Chinese province of Fujian in a bid to reduce damage to a minimum as typhoon Soudelor landed on the Chinese mainland with strong gales and heavy rains. Strong winds and heavy rain have already cut off power, destroyed farm crops along China’s eastern coast, felled more than 10,000 trees and stalled traffic on flooded streets in the provincial capital Fuzhou. The typhoon hit China after landing on Taiwan earlier yesterday and leaving at least six people dead, four missing and 102 injured.
According to the Mail on Sunday, special Scotland Yard units SO14, which protects the royal family, SO1 that protects the prime minister and MI5 (the British intelligence) have manage to foil a planned ISIS attack aimed at assassinating Queen Elizabeth next Saturday during the ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific. The bomb was supposed to explode behind the Horse Guards Parade. Other possible targets were the church of St Martin in The Fields, where will be celebrated Mass to remember the fallen, and Westminster Abbey.
US President Barack Obama has attacked the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, of spending millions of dollars on advertising against the Iranian nuclear deal, spreading false information. The New York Times says Obama told a meeting of AIPAC leaders he would not stand idly by and would replicate their attacks, in what is an “unusual break between a US president and the most powerful pro-Israel group”.
Over 240,000 have been killed in the civil war in Syria since 2011. Al Jazeera quotes the NGO National Observatory for Human Rights (Ondus) saying 12,000 children were among the dead.
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger says some 5,000 demonstrators protested through the western German city of Cologne at continued Turkish air strikes against Kurdish separatists. Turkey’s main Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas accused Ankara on Thursday of using air strikes against the Islamic State group as a cover to hit the PKK and to weaken his Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP), which made major gains in parliamentary elections in June.
The Washington Times reports organisers of a Republican event have withdrawn frontrunner Donald Trump’s invitation after he suggested that presidential debate moderator, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, was tough on him because she was menstruating. A statement from the Trump campaign insisted that Trump was referring to Kelly’s nose, and that “only a deviant would think anything else”. A staggering 24 million viewers tuned in to Fox News to watch the debate, and Trump was clearly a main factor.
De Telegraaf reports that a Rembrandt belonging to the Philips family, founder of the multinational Dutch electronics, has been stolen. The theft from the house of Eidhoven dates back to March, but it was only now that the police broke the news after arresting a man for receiving the work in which the Dutch master portrays his son Titus van Rijn. No value has been placed on the painting.
Punjab’s Child Protection Bureau has broken Pakistan’s largest child-porn gang that sexually exploited hundreds of children in three villages, blackmailed their families and sold the content to foreigners. According to The Nation, the gang of 25 young men regularly abused children for years. About 400 videos were confiscated, mainly filmed in village fields or abandoned houses, all featuring sexual acts with more than 280 children, most of them under 14 years of age. For many of these children the nightmare started when they were eight or nine, for some even at six.
Dagbladet says a Latvian Air Baltic pilot, co-pilot and two stewardesses were pulled off a Greece-bound passenger plane in Oslo early yesterday after failing a breathalyser test before take-off. They were taken into police custody and escorted to hospital for blood tests to confirm the initial tests. The four risk up to two years in prison if found guilty.
The estate of Bobbi Kristina Brown has filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against her boyfriend, alleging he is responsible for the injuries that led to her death last month. AP reports the lawsuit alleges Nick Gordon, who shared a town-home with Brown in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, beat her after an argument on the morning of January 31, then gave her a “toxic cocktail” to knock her out. It accuses him of placing her face-down in a bathtub of cold water, causing her to suffer brain damage. Gordon’s lawyers say the lawsuit was “false and slanderous”.
Villagers in a rural part of eastern India have killed five women accused of practising witchcraft. Times of India quotes the police in the state of Jharkhand saying group of assailants dragged the women out of their huts and beat them to death with sticks, stones and knives after blaming them bringing illness, poor crops and bad luck on the village. The police added 24 villagers were arrested over the killings.