What the Sunday papers say

MaltaToday reports that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is resolute on forging ahead with plans to introduce embryo freezing in Malta as part of a review of the Embryo Protection Act. The front page is shared with a report revealing that Cardinal Reinhard Marx had been sent a letter by members of the clergy in 2014, warning him that Gozo bishop Mario Grech was a “bully” with a “manifest attachment to material wealth.”

Maltese-language paper Illum reports several cases of striking inefficiencies at Mater Dei General Hospital. In one case a “total breakdown of communications” led to an elderly patient being made to spend nine hours in a waiting room before being informed that his appointment had been moved to the next day.

Another leading story reports PN sources as saying that opposition leader Simon Busuttil has been advised to keep up the pressure on government, using “continuous, aggressive, negative tactics, similar to those used by Labour under Alfred Sant in 1996” during secret meetings with strategist Richard Cachia Caruana.

The Sunday Times of Malta reports the issuing of a permit for three-storey commercial building in ODZ land in Burmarrad. The 6000sqm site located in an area known as il-Wileġ, has been approved by MEPA, following an application filed by a company partly owned by Burmarrad Commercials.

The Malta Independent’s front page is devoted to an interview with Carmelo Grech, who was detained in Libya earlier this year due to a visa mix-up. Sharing the front page is a report that the Home Affairs Ministry had replied to a request for a copy of a judgment, revoking  a 2012 suspended sentence imposed on then deputy leader of the PL Clyde Joe Cassar for forgery. A copy of an order revoking Cassar’s general interdiction was sent instead.

Il-Mument reports that the government has scrapped plans to transform Television House into a “creativity hub,” in order to accommodate former police commissioner Ray Zammit.

Sharing the front page is a report that GWU officials had been informed that the Gozo General Hospital was overstaffed and was offering employees a choice of being transferred to Malta or face redundancy.

It-Torċa leads with a story alleging that for the past 25 years, businessman and PN supporter Joe Brown had been granted use of two government properties in Valletta in a “manifestly erroneous manner”. Brown had been granted one property in exchange for the expropriation of another, however this expropriation never took place and Brown was using both sites. The Lands Department has given Brown seven days to return the keys to two Valletta properties.