The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports that the Attorney General has agreed to reopen the inquiry into the death in police custody of Nicholas Azzopardi.
The Malta Independent says the worst is over in the euro crisis.
In-Nazzjon says heart operations in Malta are a point of reference for Europe.
l-orizzont reports about workers who are not being given their full pay and their work is considered precarious.
The overseas press
Pope Benedict has called for an end to the US trade embargo against Cuba and met with revolutionary icon Fidel Castro yesterday as he ended a trip in which he urged the communist island to change. Reuters reports that in a departure ceremony at Havana airport, Benedict said Cuba could build “a society of broad vision, renewed and reconciled”, but it was more difficult “when restrictive economic measures, imposed from outside the country, unfairly burden its people”.
Radio Havana says that after the Mass, Fidel Castro visited the Pope at the Vatican embassy where the two octogenarian world leaders, with widely divergent political views, chatted for 30 minutes in what a Vatican spokesman called an “animated and very cordial" atmosphere.
The United States has accused President Assad of Syria of going back on his promise to accept the UN-Arab League peace plan. The Washington Times quotes the US State Department saying Damascus approved the plan on Tuesday but had done nothing to implement it. More than 9,000 people have died in the year-old conflict.
Meanwhile, the UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has accused Syria of targeting children in large numbers for detention and torture. She told the BBC, hundreds had been detained and tortured. "Children shot in the knees, held together with adults in really inhumane conditions, denied medical treatment for their injuries, either held as hostages or as sources of information." Pillay said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would face justice for the abuses carried out by his security forces. MSNBC says Human Rights Watch has also accused Assad's forces of human rights abuses, including using human shields in northern Syria.
The Guardian leads with what it describes as “a damning” Council of Europe report saying a catalogue of failures by Nato warships and European coastguards led to the deaths of dozens of migrants left adrift at sea last year.
The Irish Enquirer says the European Commission has proposed establishing a cybercrime centre within the union – pooling European expertise and training. The Commission said the centre, which would be part of Europol, would warn member countries of cyber threats, new ways to commit online crimes and identify organised networks and prominent offenders. It said that the centre would also be able to respond to queries from investigators, prosecutors and judges.
ABC reports that donor-conceived in the Australian state of Victoria are urging the State Government to change legislation to give them access to information about their genetic history. People born from reproductive cells donated before 1988 have no right to information because their donors were guaranteed anonymity. The Victorian Law Reform Committee has now recommended the law be changed to allow them to access information about their heritage.
Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has declared mini-skirts as pornographic. According to the Jakarta Post, skirts hemmed above the knee would be included in a government task force's definition of pornography that the government would rely on in the future to enforce indecency laws. After standards have been set, the task force would apply them nationwide across all ethnicities.
Some 400 Afghan women have been jailed for ''moral crimes''. The New York Times says that Human Rights Watch has called for governments around the world to pressure the Afghan government to free the women detained behind bars mostly after fleeing domestic violence or forced marriage. Some were convicted of zina, or sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution.
Adnkronos reports that a man was in serious condition, with burns over almost 100 percent of his body, after setting himself on fire in his car parked outside the Italian tax collection agency in Bologna in an apparent suicide attempt because of financial difficulties. Before setting himself aflame, the 58-year-old man wrote three suicide notes. In one of his missives he expressed the desire to take his own life, saying he had paid his taxes and was being mistreated by the tax authorities.