The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta reports how Mepa has approved a three storey commercial building in an ODZ in Burmarrad.
MaltaToday says that the prime minister is resolute on introducing embryo freezing.
The Malta Independent on Sunday carries comments by Carmelo Grech, the Maltese ship's master who was held in Libya. He denied that he was carrying weapons or a large amount of cash, and said he will not return to Libya.
Il-Mument says Gozo hospital workers have been warned that there are excess workers.
It-Torca says a businessman enjoyed a government property for 25 years on the basis of false documents.
Illum says people phone Castille in order to be served at the hospital.
KullHadd says the Medicines Authority has increased its revenue by 30%.
The overseas press
Deutsche Welle reports that as thousands of migrants arrived in Austria and Germany after having been stranded in Hungary for days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has threatened to seek legal action against EU countries in breach of refugee agreements. She emphasised all tasks and liabilities associated with the influx of migrants needed to be distributed equitably among EU member states to ensure a “fair distribution of the burden”.
According to The Sunday Times, the British government is poised to accept 15,000 Syrian refugees and hopes next month to get backing for air strikes against Islamic State jihadists. The paper says Prime Minister David hopes to persuade MPs in the opposition Labour Party to back air strikes in Syria in a vote early next month.
And the Sunday edition of The Sun says that 52 per cent of Britons want the government to stop prevaricating and give the order to the armed forces of intervene in Syria to end the four-year war. The survey also shows that 36 per cent of respondents would like to receive more refugees.
A majority of Britons now favour leaving the European Union amid concerns over immigration, according to an opinion poll in the Mail on Sunday. It found that if a referendum was held tomorrow, 51 per cent would vote to quit the EU against 49% who would vote to remain. The survey is likely to set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street ahead the promised referendum, which is due to take place before 2017.
NBC News reports some 200 supporters of a Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to hand out marriage licenses to gay couples rallied and prayed yesterday as she faced a third day behind bars. Some in the crowd, chanting, “Thank you, Kim; Thank you, Kim”, swiftly defended Kim Davis, who defied court orders to issue the licenses even after the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in June. Meanwhile, her husband told Daily Mail.com she was “holding up real good” and was prepared to sit in prison for months.
La Hora says Guatemalans, disgusted with rampant corruption that felled their president, are voting today in elections many see as meaningless without a vast political system clean-up. President Otto Perez, accused of overseeing a massive corruption scheme that allegedly milked the customs agency, saw his immunity from prosecution lifted by Congress last Tuesday. He resigned a day later and was promptly arrested on a court order.
Bild reports German police have begun a criminal probe after 29 visitors at a private seminar centre near Hamburg became intoxicated with a banned psychedelic drug amphetamine 2C-E or Aquarust. They were rushed to hospital, barely able to speak.
The obsession with weight gives more extra pounds, concludes a study published in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers asked over 14,000 Amerians and Britons their perception of their body weight, and found that those who thought they were overweight were more likely to eat compulsively for stress and, therefore, to continue to gain weight.
El Pais reports six people – two men and four women, one of them pregnant – were killed at the Rally of La Coruna, in Spain when one of the cars in the race, a Peugeot 206 XS, careered off the road sweeping viewers. Twenty others were wounded, two of them seriously.
Kathmandu Post announces the death in the United State of Chandr Bahadur Dangi, the Nepalese who in February 2012 was crowned the shortest man in the world. 75-year-old Dangi, who was 54.6 cm, worked for the Magic Circus of Samoa.
A New York millionaire has bequeathed a $100,000 (€86,500) trust fund to care for her 32 pet cockatiels. The New York Post reports Leslie Ann Mandel’s will asks that the small parrots continue living in an aviary at her €3.6-million East Hampton home. The will will also care for a cat and a rescue dog. Mandel ran a fundraising firm and amassed a €4.6 million fortune. She died in June aged 69.
El Universal says Chilean police have rescued a malnourished two-year-old boy found being breastfed by a neighbour’s dog. They said a witness spotted the dog feeding the boy at a mechanic’s workshop in the desert port of Arica, some 1,240 miles north of Santiago. The mother showed up at the hospital drunk, but she has not been arrested because there was no physical harm to the child. A family court hearing on September 22 will decide who cares for the child.
Clarin reports an Argentine man kept his wife and autistic son locked in a cage for years and forced the son to eat dog food and breathe gasoline fumes. A judicial source said inside the cage, made of bricks, wood and metal bars, bags of human excrement lay on the ground, as did dog food, used syringes, gasoline cans, locks, chains and rope which he apparently used to tie them up. The suspect is a 66-year-old former construction worker. His wife is 61 and has psychiatric problems and the son, who can barely speak, is 32. The source added, “This is a story of terror. To enter that house is to witness true madness.”
And on a lighter note: Ohio Post reports when Andrea Cammelleri received a parking ticket for leaving her pickup truck parked in an area for more than 24 hours, she just relied on her knowledge of punctuation to point out that based on comma placement, her vehicle was not in violation of the law as the autos that the village of West Jefferson would not allow to be parked for more than a day were “any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle”. As she so astutely argued, her motor vehicle was not the same thing as a “motor vehicle camper”. The prosecutors rebutted that the law was clear enough thanks to context, but the appeals court sided with Cammelleri and advised lawmakers to revise the sentence to include a comma between vehicle and camper if they wanted it to apply to standard autos too!