The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta says a secret encroachment extension by the Labour Party club in Siggiewi has thwarted plans by the local council to provide more services from its adjoining offices.
The Malta Independent says weak inflation has puts the ECB on the spot ahead of a Malta meeting this week.
In-Nazzjon says Simon Busuttil in his Budget speech reply in parliament this evening will show how the Budget could have been much better.
l-orizzont quotes Joseph Muscat saying the government's budgets are not dictated by electoral timetables.
The overseas press
On the eve of the second Congress of Vienna, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has written to President Obama with what The Wall Street Journal calls “a clear message”: a new world order is needed. He said the great powers must return to dialogue and, above all, to find solutions. He warned that the destruction of the Islamic State was more urgent than the ouster of Assad.
Meanwhile, AFP quotes the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying at least 40 Islamic State militants have been killed in air strikes in Syria. The British-based monitoring group said a convoy of 16 vehicles was hit as it drove through an eastern part of Hama province overnight.
Following Hungary’s decision to close its border with Croatia, Zurnal reports the Slovenian government has said it would only take in a maximum of 2,500 migrants a day.
According to Berliner Zeitung, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany would support Turkey’s EU membership bid. Her statement came as she visited Turkish leaders in a bid to secure Ankara’s support in stemming the current migrant influx into the EU. Turkish PM Davutoglu hailed Europe’s “better approach”.
According to preliminary results, Switzerland’s right-wing anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is set to win a third of the seats in Switzerland’s parliamentary elections. ATS news agency projects that the SVP may gain an additional 11 seats in parliament, resulting in 64 out of the 200 seats in the lower house. Around 50 per cent of voters cited migration as a main concern.
Deutsche Welle announces that early results indicate that Henriette Reker, the victim of a knife attack on Saturday, had been elected mayor of Cologne. With an absolute majority of 52.7 per cent, Reker becomes the city’s first woman in the position. Her closest competitor, Jochen Ott of the Social Democrats (SPD), garnered around 32 per cent of the vote.
al bawaba says Egyptians largely stayed away from the polls yesterday in the first phase of a parliamentary election that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi hailed as a milestone for Egypt’s democracy. Many polling stations’ projected turnout as low as 10 percent. The first round of the election began yesterday in 14 governorates and will continue today.
The Jerusalem Post reports an Israeli soldier has died and six other people have been injured after an Arab opened fire on a bus stop in Beersheba. The Israeli cabinet has announced a raft of new security measures at its regular Sunday meeting, including more roadblocks and sweeping stop and search powers.
Times of India says the police have arrested two teenagers over the rape of a toddler, the latest sexual assault on a child in the capital to ignite public anger. Twenty police teams questioned more than 250 suspects before arresting the juveniles over the attack on the two-year-old girl, who was found bleeding in a park near her New Delhi home on Friday night.
Reuters reports several thousand protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and the formation of an interim government last night marched in the centre of
the capital Podgorica. Andrija Mandic, a leader of the main opposition bloc, the Democratic Front, warned protests would turn national if their demands were not met by Saturday.
Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has urged governments not to sign the Paris climate accord next December unless China, India and other countries do more to tackle global warming. The Financial Times quoted Deripaska, president of Russia’s largest aluminium producer, noting the pledges offered for the agreement so far meant the deal risked being too weak to stop global temperatures rising to potentially risky levels.
The Washington Post says the US has lobbied for another four-year term at UNESCO, despite $300 million in arrears to the organisation. Washington lost voting rights after it stopped paying dues in protest of Palestine’s admission in 2011. US Secretary of State John Kerry has said President Obama would urge US lawmakers to restore funding to UNESCO.