Press digest

The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:

The Times says film director Mario Philip Azzopardi has a dream of making a public collection over a period of five years to rebuild the Royal Opera House. It also features reports on the protest against censorship, held yesterday, and a case where a court found that the interrogation of a minor without the presence of a lawyer violated human rights.

The Malta Independent features the funeral of the Qormi fireworks factory, held yesterday. It also carries comments by the Prime Minister on the PN parliamentary group meeting held two days ago.

In-Nazzjon leads with comments by PN General Secretary Paul Borg Olivier that the party was focused on job creation. It also reports on the €5m investment by ProMinent Fluids and investment by farmers in Mgarr.

l-orizzont also gives prominence to the Qormi funeral. It carries the appeal by trade unions for the government to suspend the utility tariffs; and evidence by the Commission of Police that the politico-medical situation was the focus of police investigations into the Karin Grech murder.

The overseas press

EU Observer says that the European Commission has recommended the launch of EU membership negotiations with Iceland, seven months after the Icelandic government submitted a membership application. The commission's new Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said he was confident Iceland would show determination in addressing the challenges highlighted in the opinion.

Kathemerini reports police in Athens fired tear gas and clashed with youths during a protest by 25,000 against austerity measures. The demonstration was held alongside a general strike that shut down Greece. The country's airspace was closed to all flights while trains and ferries stood idle and archaeological sites remained shut for the day. Schools, government offices and courthouses were all closed while there was also major disruption to public transport, banks, hospitals and state-owned companies.

Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper says Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Sheik Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of the Hamas militant group, has been exposed as a top Israeli informant who helped prevent dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. Codenamed "the Green Prince" by his handlers, the younger Yousef was one of the Shin Bet security service's most valuable sources, it claimed. He converted to Christianity and moved to California in 2007.

The Herald Sun says three Australians, including a woman living in Israel who is days away from giving birth, have been named as new suspects in the assassination of a Hamas militant Mahmud al-Mabhouh in a luxury hotel in Dubai hotel last month.

The Washington Times quotes a retired US Navy vice-admiral who served as ex-president George W Bush's director of national intelligence, warning the United States would lose a cyber war if it fought one today. At a hearing on cyber security held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Michael McConnell compared the danger of cyber war to the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. A month ago Google revealed that it and other US companies had been the target of a series of sophisticated cyber attacks originating in China.

Corriere della Sera reports that three Google executives have been sentenced to six months in prison by an Italian court for invasion of privacy. Their case relates to a 2006 video that showed abuse of an autistic teenager.

USA Today reports that a killer whale launched a deadly attack on a 40-year-old female trainer after she slipped and fell into its tank at a Sea World marine park in Orlando, Florida. Officials described the incident as an accident, saying the woman fell in the water, but witnesses said the whale jumped up and grabbed her by the waist. The whale, named Tilikum, has been previously involved in two fatal incidents.

Three British national newspapers focus on the scandal surrounding Stafford Hospital, where around 1,400 patients died due to sub-standard care. The Independent says the report was a "damning indictment" of the NHS while the Daily Mail calls it the NHS' worst scandal ever. The Daily Telegraph claims bosses at the site have all escaped being punished.

Il Tempo quotes environmental activists warning of a "an unparalleled ecological disaster" in Italy as a massive oil slick made its way from the small Lambro river in northern Italy into the country's longest and most important river, the Po. Italian officials said the spill was caused by intentional sabotage at an oil depot, where vandals opened the cisterns, allowing some 2.5 million liters of oil to flow into the Lambro.

Bild announces that the head of Germany's Protestant Church, Margot Kaessmann, has resigned from her post as the top-ranking Lutheran bishop. Police had stopped the 51-year-old for running a red light in Hanover on Saturday night and a test showed her blood alcohol level to be three times the legal limit for driving in Germany.

Le Parisien says a series of deliberately shocking anti-smoking adverts that compare nicotine addiction to sexual abuse has sparked lively debate in France. The images show a man pushing the face of a kneeling child, holding a cigarette in its mouth, towards his crotch. France's minister for families said she would take measures to get the advert banned on grounds of "public offense to decency".

According to The Sun, one of the world's largest drug gangs is headed by a stunning lingerie model, crowned Colombia's "Queen of Coffee" in 2000. It reported that an international arrest warrant has been issued for 30-year-old Angie Sanselmente Valencia, who had quit modelling and left her native Colombia for Argentina to set up the empire last year. Her "angels" boarded flights from Colombia to Cancun, Mexico, with bags of cocaine every 24 hours, which were then trafficked to Europe.

The New York Daily News reports that a serial rapist in New York has been sentenced to 430 years after being found guilty of raping seven women in elevators, stairwells or apartments, before being traced through DNA and security camera footage. Boker Thomas, 31, had pleaded not guilty.

Toronto Star reports a 31-year-old Australian mother has been charged with murdering her two young sons after their bodies were found in the bathtub of their Canadian home earlier this month. She had been involved in a bitter custody dispute with her Canadian husband, threatening to take their sons to Australia. She also tried to commit suicide by jumping off an overpass.

The Daily Mail reports a 24-year-old primary school teacher, who was working in Abu Dhabi since 2008, has been found dead after naked pictures of herself appeared on her Facebook page. Emma Jones, who feared she could be sent to jail in the Muslim country over the photos, committed suicide as she was planning to return home. Miss Jones' mother told an inquest her daughter was distressed after her ex-boyfriend posted the pictures on the internet and she was accused of prostitution by a man working at the school.

The New York Post reports a New York woman whose false accusation of rape at knifepoint led to an innocent man being jailed for nearly four years has been sentenced to spend between one and three years behind bars after admitting that she lied. Biurny Peguero, 27, first confessed the lie to a priest last year and the wrongfully imprisoned man was freed shortly after.