Press digest

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

The Times reports on the garnishee order for €18,000 on Thea Garrett, issued at the request of the owners of Exotique. The newspaper says Thea’s parents were shocked by move on eve of their daughter’s departure to Oslo, where she will be representing Malta in the Eurovision song contest. The newspaper also reports that the Appeal’s Court has decided that the directors of Price Club were liable for debts. A photo story shows Libyan children arriving to visit the sole survivor of a crash in Tripoli last Thursday.

l-Orizzont reports that an investigation on fraud and abuse is being carried out in the Civil Protection Department. The department, the newspaper says, is being investigated for the payment of overtime and additional payments to a particular person. Around 20 members of the CPD received a note with allegations that this person was paid €3,000 a month in overtime. This person was allegedly also paid for shift and overtime on his rest and off days.

In the Malta Independent, former President Guido de Marco calls for a change in mentality in Parliament. The newspaper also reports Martin Watson, a key note speaker at a half-day conference on asylum in Malta, describing the EU asylum policy contradictory and self-centred.

In-Nazzjon dedicates its front page to the opening of the PN council. It also gets the opinion of UHM general secretary Gejtu Vella on the time wasting in Parliament.

The international press

Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann has expressed doubts with public broadcaster ZDF that Greece would be able to pay down its debts despite a 110-billion-euro rescue package. However, he was more optimistic about the success chances of a separate 750 billion euro fund intended to aid faltering economies in Spain and Italy.

The Financial Times reports global shares have fallen sharply as concerns continue about the impact of financial austerity measures in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Concerns that Greece's debt crisis could spread to other countries fuelled worries about a euro collapse. Both the dollar and gold rose as investors sought their traditional "safe-haven".

Kathimerini says bomb blasts at a prison and a court rocked two Greek cities in less than 24 hours in a warning militants still pose a threat to the debt-stricken country battling a devastating economic crisis.

Greek Defence Minister Panos Beglitis has told the French daily Le Monde he would be reducing the country’s huge defence budget from 6.8 billion to six billion euros. He also denied Berlin and Paris had brought undue to pressure to enter into multi-billion-dollar weapons contracts.

According to El Pais, President Sarkozy threatened to pull his country out of the eurozone to force Germany help Greece with its debt crisis. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a meeting of his Socialist Party that Sarkozy made the threat at the Brussels summit of EU leaders last Friday.

Magyar Post reports Viktor Orban of the center-right Fidesz party has taken the oath of office as the new prime minister. The Fidesz party won the April elections with a landslide majority, obtaining 263 seats of the 386-seats parliament and a two-thirds majority that would allow the party to modify the constitution and electoral law.

The New York Times says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged protesters and troops in Thailand to avoid more violence as a tense Bangkok stand-off continues.

Bangkok Post reports 10 people – nine men and one woman, all civilians – have been killed and 125 wounded as Thai troops opened fire on the protesters, who are trying to bring down the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Az-Zaman reports a car bomb and a suicide blast ripped through a football match in northern Iraq, killing 25 people and wounding about 100. Friday's attacks were the deadliest to strike Tal Afar since July 9, when a double suicide attack targeting the home of a police sergeant and his brother killed 35 people and wounded 61.

Raj Express says at least 28 wedding guests, including 12 women and three children, were electrocuted when their bus hit a power cable in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Bihar Times says that in a similar accident, 10 Hindus returning from a cremation were electrocuted on Thursday when a live power cable fell on their bus in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

The Washington Times leads with President Obama’s angry outburst againt oil companies for trying to shift blame for the Gulf of Mexico slick and his vow to end the "cozy" ties between the industry and government regulators. He said he had ordered "top to bottom" reform of the federal agency that oversees oil drilling, and announced a review of the enforcement of environmental protection rules.

The Daily Mirror says a 21-year-old Asian woman has been arrested after former UK Treasury Minister Stephen Timms was stabbed as he was holding a constituency surgery at a community centre in east London. His injuries were not life threatening and he was said to be in "good spirits".

Metro says David Cameron was facing calls from his own backbenches to abandon a plan requiring a vote of 55 per cent of MPs for Parliament to be dissolved before the end of its five-year term. The measure was part of the deal hammered out between the coalition partners to reassure the Liberal Democrats that Mr Cameron could not pull out and call a snap general election when they were at a disadvantage.

De Telegraf reports the sole survivor of the Libyan plane crash, an 11-year-old Dutch boy, will be flown home today after his visiting uncle and aunt told him both his parents and his brother had died in the crash. Safety officials said the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus 330-200, flying from Johannesburg to Gatwick, may have been attempting a missed approach in poor visibility caused by sunlit haze.

Abrar says a hard-line Iranian cleric has declared that God may be sparing the West from natural disasters so its people can sin more and doom themselves to hell. Kazem Sedighi, earlier claimed that women who do not dress modestly spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.

According to Wirtschafts Woche, a UFO expert has claimed aliens have hijacked a NASA spacecraft and were using it to try to contact Earth. Voyager 2, an unmanned probe that has been in space since 1977, was sending strange messages that are confusing scientists. NASA claims it is a software problem with the flight data system. But German academic Hartwig Hausdorf believed it is because it has been taken over by extra-terrestrial life.