The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta reports how a disabled man has complained that he was beaten by the police in 2010. It also reports how a Gozitan woman was helped by staff at the Land Department to sell government land.
The Malta Independent says the tallinja card has become a success, according to the general manager of Malta Public Transport.
In-Nazzjon quotes Simon Busuttil saying the government has no solutions for problems in health, traffic and crime
l-orizzont says the Minister of Home Affairs has described as 'unrealistic' the doubling of the quota of refugees to be housed in EU countries.
The overseas press
According to Die Welt, the European Commission is expected to present a new plan for refugee distribution among EU countries on Wednesday. It says the document will propose to EU member states they take in another 120,000 migrants seeking a special political status of protection: 30,000 to be sheltered in Germany, 24,000 in France, and 14,000 in Spain.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu has criticised the “ridiculous number” of refugees that the EU is limited to accept and spoke of a “Fortress Christian Europe”. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Davutoglu said that Turkey had already accepted more than two million refugees from Syria and Iraq only to create “a buffer zone between chaos and Europe” but it got little help from the EU .
Euronews reports the UN refugee agency has called for the emergency evacuation of 17,000 refugees crammed on the Greek island of Lesbos. The refugees are sleeping rough around the port area as they wait for the Greek authorities to issue travel permits so they can board ferries to Athens and then travel on to northern Europe. Frustrated refugees are involved in regular clashes with Greek riot police.
Austria says it is planning to phase out special measures that have allowed thousands of migrants to travel freely from Hungary to western Europe. The BBC reports Chancellor Werner Faymann said Austria would remove the emergency measures for asylum seekers “step by step”.
Deutsche Welle says some 10,000 refugees yesterday arrived in Bavaria by train, bus or foot from Hungary. The interior ministry warned that Germany’s willingness to help “should not be overstretched”, adding that the decision to allow migrants in over recent days was an exception. He emphasised the EU’s “Dublin rules”, requiring asylum seekers to be processed in the first country they arrived in, remained valid.
Despite Western countries’ failed policies in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear Russia was ready to cooperate with Washington to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis. He told Deutsche Witschafts Nachrichten that Moscow is assured President Assad was ready for new elections and he called on the Syrian opposition to take part in the conflict’s peaceful resolution.
Novinky quotes Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka calling on Russia to join the efforts aimed at handling the crisis in Syria. He said it was “crucially important for Europe that the war in Syria ends, otherwise we will not be able to stop the migration flow”.
As Britain prepares to open its doors to thousands of Syrian refugees, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said that local authorities across the UK will get extra resources from the £12 billion (€16.4 billion) aid budget to help deal with the cost of housing during the first year. He told BBC TV that “in the longer term we need a fundamental rethink of our aid policy”. Prime Minister David Cameron will announce details of the programme to the House of Commons in London late today.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for his country to take in some of the refugees streaming through the Middle East, citing the potential risks. Haaretz says he told Sunday’s cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israel was not indifferent to the human tragedy of the refugees from Syria and Africa, but it must control our borders against illegal migrants and terrorism.
The Jerusalem Post reports thousands of protesters rallied in Jerusalem to demand more funds for Israel’s 47 Christian schools which they say receive a third of what the Israeli government allocates to Jewish ones. Christians are currently less than two per cent of the population of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Libya’s draft constitution will be finalised and published before October 20, Ali Tarhouni, the president of the Constitutional Drafting Assembly, has told the Libya Herald. He hoped to have a referendum within three to five months of the publication of the draft. October 20 has also been set by UN Special Envoy Bernardino Leon as the deadline for a new Government of National Accord (GNA) to be installed and operating in Tripoli.
After seven decades stored in jars and test tubes in a French medical school, the remains of several Holocaust victims were finally buried. France 24 says the remains were of 86 people whose corpses were sent to the anatomy institute at the University of Strasbourg during the Second World War for the experiments of August Hirt, a notorious Nazi anatomy researcher.
Le Parisien reports a controversial sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor on display in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles – and informally dubbed the “queen’s vagina” – has been vandalised again, this time by anti-Semitic graffiti. The giant sculpture was attacked in June and then cleaned, but Kapoor said this time the graffiti would remain on the work, to bear witness to hatred.
Anchorage Press says an Alaska woman has been arrested for hijacking a police car with her husband handcuffed in the backseat. Amber Watford, 28, is facing several charges including theft and hindering prosecution. According to a dispatch report, she slipped into the vehicle as a state trooper was engaged with another motorist on an unrelated matter. Joshua had been arrested for failing to appear for court-ordered classes following a driving under the influence charge.