The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.
Times of Malta says Air Malta is being given some leeway by the European Commission as it departs from its plan to return to profit by next March. The newspaper also speaks to a former head of flight operations at Air Malta who said the positioning of the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt was a clear indication that the plane had split apart in mid-air.
In-Nazzjon speaks to Noel Sciberras, the Maltese man who spent 47 days in captivity in Libya, following his return to Malta yesterday.
The Malta Independent speaks to Din L-Art Ħelwa and Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar who criticised Malta Developers Association President Sandro Chetcuti’s statement to developers, to “make hay while the sun shines.”
L-Orizzont leads with the testimony given in court yesterday by Nizar el Gadi, the Libyan accused with the murder of a Maltese lawyer.
International news
AFP reports a large blanket of thick fog descended on Europe, causing scores of flight cancellations from the continent’s busiest airport, London Heathrow, and delays at key hubs including Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control organisation, said the fog also caused delays in Paris, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, Luxembourg and Brussels, though Britain was the worst affected.
The Times has learnt British Prime Minister David Cameron has abandoned plans to push for British airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria after he was unable to persuade enough Labour MPs to defy their leader on the issue, and failed to quell a Tory rebellion against the move, which would have endangered his parliamentary majority of 12. A Commons vote on extending military action over the border from Iraq will not go ahead, Whitehall sources said.
France 24 quotes a report by several European campaign groups showing EU member states were still failing to tackle tax avoidance practices despite vowing to shut down loopholes after the LuxLeaks scandal one year ago. They had passed a number of measures since LuxLeaks revealed that top companies had reduced their tax rates to as little as one per cent but most still provided “ample opportunities” for multinationals to “dodge taxes and hide money”.
Berliner Zeitung reports German Chancellor Angela Merkel has refused to bow to pressure to shut borders even as the German leader struggles to fix a rift in her governing coalition over how to tackle the country’s biggest influx of migrants since World War II. Facing unrest from within her Christian Democratic Union, the chancellor said the country could not afford to turn inward, but has to instead embrace geopolitical challenges “much more actively.”
Meanwhile, Wiener Zeitung announces that to stem the flow of migrants, Austria has decided to tighten up the rules of asylum law and as of November 15 it would introduce asylum for only three years. The Interior Ministry said that after three years, permission to stay in Austria would automatically lapse and a new audit would determine whether there wwere still grounds to grant an extension of asylum.
Dunya reports a day after his AKP won absolute majority, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asked the world to respect the will of the people. The pro-Islamic Party for Justice and Development, with 49.41 per cent of the vote, won 317 of the 550 seats in Parliament.
Egypt’s foreign minister has sharply criticised airlines which said they would no longer fly over the Sinai peninsula after a Russian airliner crashed there at the weekend killing all 224 on board. In an interview with Television Algerienne, Sameh Shoukry said the airlines, which included Emirates, Lufthansa and KLM, were “irresponsible”.
Meanwhile, The New York Times says mystery and confusion still surround the final moments of the Russian jet. The airline has ruled out pilot error or a technical fault, but Russian aviation officials dismissed those comments as “premature”. Some aviation experts raised the possibility that a bomb on board the Metrojet Airbus A321-200 brought it down, while others cited an incident in 2001 when the aircraft grazed the runway with its tail while landing. James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, said that while there is no direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet, it couldn’t be excluded that the plane was brought down by Islamic State extremists in the Sinai Peninsula.
Deutsche Welle reports Volkswagen has issued a swift denial after US regulators reported that its cars with larger diesel engines were also found to have contained software aimed at skirting tests to comply with pollution rules in the United States. The alleged violations cover models including the 2014 Touareg, 2015 Porsche Cayenne and the 2016 Audi A6 Quattro, A7 Quattro, A8 and Q5.
Ansa says Vatican authorities may take legal action against books that are about to be published containing leaked confidential Holy See documents. The books are expected to be about the Vatican’s financial and economic affairs. The news comes after two former members of the commission on the Holy See’s economic-administrative structure, a high-ranking Spanish clergyman and a lay woman, were arrested over the alleged leaking of confidential documents.
Singapore tops the list of the healthiest countries in the world compiled by Bloomberg using data from the United Nations, WHO and the World Bank. Italy is second followed by Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Israel, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.
An ancient tree has started to become a female after 3,000 years as a male. The Scotsman says researchers have found some branches have sprouted red berries typical of the female specimens. Sex-change rate had previously been observed in tress, but not in so old specimens.