Press digest

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

The Sunday Times reports that President George Abela is to be brought back from China in an air ambulance after injuring his back in a fall. It also reports that a man told the police that he lit a petard outside the Gharghur fireworks factory in a flash of madness. The factory then blew up. No one was injured. In an interview, the newspaper also quotes the Israeli ambassador denying that his country had put any pressure for Malta to choose an Israeli company's bid for the power station extension contract.

The Malta Independent on Sunday says Joseph Muscat in a speech yesterday pulled out the stops ahead of the power station debate. It also says 85 Maltese are awaiting kidney transplant surgery.

MaltaToday carries an opinion survey saying that 49 per cent would trust Joseph Muscat as prime minister, but only 35 per cent known about his policies. It also says that Richard Cachia Caruana had warned the Office of the Prime Minister about the Delimara power station contract allegations.

Il-Mument quotes the Prime Minister, speaking at a PN May Day event, saying that government policies had prevented Malta from getting into the same situation as Greece. It also reports that there was a heated meeting in Joseph Muscat's office on the situation at One TV and Radio. The managing director, Michael Vella Haber, reportedly went out on long leave.

It-Torca features the living conditions of a pensioner who has a pension of €376 monthly. It also quotes Dr Muscat calling for a freevote on the power station debate on Thursday.

KullHadd says Joseph Muscat is giving hope of bringing the country out of mediocrity. It also says that a supposedly blacklisted company was awarded a government contract despite its involvement in the Vat fraud scandal.

Illum says that according to a survey, only 11 per cent of couples share house chores. It also says that a Zurrieq quarry owner has stopped major road works by requesting a court warrant.

The overseas press:

Kathimerini reports that in Athens, May Day demonstrators attacked the police with a petrol bomb and set fire to vehicles in violent confrontations in protest against what they describe as "draconian measures" - massive spending cuts to bring the country out of debt. The police responded with tear gas. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is today expected to announce a deal has been reached on a 45-billion-euro rescue deal for Greece. Eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels to approve the package.

In Portugal, another heavily indebted euro area country, Expresso quotes Manuel Carvalho da Silva, head of the country's main CGTP union, warning the government that "a tough budgetary policy imposed blindly could lead to disaster". He was addressing a crowd of some 90,000 people in Lisbon.

Avvenire reports Pope Benedict is to appoint a special envoy to run and reform an influential Roman Catholic priestly order, The Legionaries of Christ, whose late founder, Father Marcial Maciel, was discovered to have been a sexual molester and to have fathered at least one child. The announcement came at the end of a year-long inquiry which involved visits by papal inspectors to its more than 120 seminaries, 200 schools and 600 centers for lay Catholics around the world.

Al Jazeera reports that Arab foreign ministers have endorsed indirect peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis, which collapsed in March when Israel announced a new Jewish housing project in east Jerusalem. They warned peace efforts would collapse again if Israel continued to build settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Washington Times reports BP's chief executive Tony Hayward was on his way to Louisiana as the worst US oil spill in decades, which American scientists say has tripled in size, began to spread into precious shoreline habitat along the Gulf Coast. BP said it was "taking full responsibility" for the spill and would pay for "legitimate claims" stemming from the disaster. President Obama, meanwhile, stopped any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs had new safeguards to prevent a repeat of the disaster.

Arkansas Post says debris from destroyed homes, overturned vehicles and uprooted trees were scattered everywhere after several tornadoes ripped through the state, killing a woman and injuring dozens others. National Guard troops were sent to help residents in some hard-hit areas.

In an editorial for the Bild am Sonntag, German MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin, who leads Germany's Free Democrats in Brussels, says full-body veils, or burqas, worn by some Muslim women should be banned across Europe because they rob women of their personalities. She said personal and religious freedom were to be supported, but should not "go so far as to take away a person's face in public".

Queensland's Sunday Mail reports that two spectators were taken to hospital after they were hit by a race car that flipped over a safety barrier and launched into the crowd at Queensland Raceway. In horrifying scenes, Kain Magro's Mini Cooper S tumbled at high speed into the crowd after rolling and smashing through a wire fence.

A new witness had come forward in the search for Madeleine McCann who vanished on May 3, 2007. Gail Cooper, 53, tells the Sunday Express the man secretly filmed working at a market in Portugal was the same person she saw three times in Praia da Luz on the Algarve, just days before Madeleine was snatched. And she claims she had a tense 15-minute conversation with the suspect before Madeleine disappeared.

Australia's Sunday Territorian reports that Teresa Nelson armed herself with a knife, hidden in her bra, and then went searching for her husband whom she thought he spent the night with an ex-girlfriend - but he had actually been in a police cell. When she found him, they argued and she punched him in the head and then, when he hit her back with a rock, she drew the knife. Nelson was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended after nine months. The pair had been married for five months when the incident happened in November 2009.