PRESS REVIEW – Thursday, September 3: There's outrage in Malta after a tycoon was found not guilty of masterminding the murder of high-profile investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. In Brazil, a Supreme Court justice who was pivotal in sentencing former President Jair Bolsonaro to prison is implicated in a corruption scandal of his own. Plus conservationists marvel after a mating frenzy of the endangered kakapo – a flightless, nocturnal parrot native to New Zealand.
We start with a court verdict from Malta: the acquittal of a man accused of orchestrating the killing of prominent journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She was known for her investigation of the Panama Papers and had made a name for herself reporting on government corruption, nepotism and money laundering. This made her a target – she was killed in a shocking car bombing in 2017. The man accused of ordering her killing is Yorgen Fenech, who is one of Malta's richest men. A court verdict found him not guilty of involvement in her murder. The decision, as the Guardian says, came as a blow, not just to Caruana Galizia's family but to those who saw the trial as a landmark action in the fight to protect press freedom in Europe.
