Press digest

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

The Times says the Speaker can block the Opposition’s adjournment motions, basing himself on a ruling by former Speaker Myriam Spiteri Debono. It also says that a Maltese ship has been blocked in Tripoli for eight days following smuggling allegations which are being denied.

The Malta Independent reports on a PN strategy group meeting at the Corinthia yesterday. It also reports how a drunken police inspector hurled insults at Commissioner John Rizzo.

l-orizzont says government spending continued to increase in the first quarter of this year and the gap between revenue and expenditure widened.  

In-Nazzjon focuses on a tour by the Prime Minister at Cassar Shipyard.

The overseas press

China dissident Chen Guangcheng is in the US embassy in Beijing following his dramatic escape from house arrest, fellow activist Hu Jia has told the BBC. Hu said Chen, who is blind, had scaled a high wall and was driven hundreds of kilometres to Beijing on Sunday. Both the US State Department and the US embassy in Beijing have refused to comment on the claim.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told German daily Leipziger Volkszeitung that pursuing growth would be on the agenda of next June’s EU summit in June. But she dismissed proposals for a renegotiation of the budget pact mooted notably by France's frontrunning presidential candidate Francois Hollande.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and European Commission chief José Manuel Barroso warned on Friday against growth measures that fuel debt. AFP says the pair held a breakfast meeting in Brussels a day after separately contributing to a conference on how to revive eurozone growth. They agreed that the revival of growth must come through “a relentless focus on improving competitiveness and not through higher levels of debt”. Chancellor Merkel also mirrored that view in an interview to regional Hamburg-based radio and television broadcaster NDR on Friday, saying “growth did not have to cost money", and stressed that it could be achieved through "structural reforms".

The Financial Times quotes data released by the National Statistics Institute which shows that more than 5.6 million Spaniards or 24.4 per cent of the workforce were unemployed. Half of young people under 25 have no work and in more than 1.7 million households no one has a job. On Thursday, Standard & Poor’s cut the sovereign credit rating of Spain by two notches to triple B plus and placed the country on a negative outlook, saying it also expected the country’s economy to contract during 2012 and 2013.

Adevarul reports that the Romanian government has resigned after losing a no-confidence vote, as opposition parties seized on widespread public anger over biting austerity measures, cronyism and corruption. Some 235 MPs voted against the government of Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, four more votes than needed.

Global Post says that the Czech government of Prime Minister Petre Necas narrowly survived a parliamentary vote amid growing public anger against austerity measures and corruption. The final vote, which came after an intense nine-hour parliamentary debate in Prague, was 105 lawmakers for, 93 against.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned that the European Union ban on purchasing Iranian oil would end up hurting the bloc's member countries. Speaking on state-run Rossiya 24 television, he said readjusting refineries geared specifically to Iranian oil would demand “substantial investments that the EU could hardly afford”. 

Al Bawaba says a suicide bomb killed at least 11 people in Damascus, while government forces killed three people – including a child – after firing on tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrating against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Syria's state television said that a bombing, which also left 28 wounded, took place in front of a mosque at the time of the Friday prayers. At the same time, the Syrian opposition groups reported mass demonstrations in the Damascus area, in Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.  AFP quotes Amnesty International saying more than 360 people have been killed in Syria since UN ceasefire observers deployed last week.

Reuters reports that a letter written by the British bandleader on the Titanic to his parents in England five-days before the ship struck an iceberg and sank a century ago sold for nearly $155,000 (€117,000) in an online auction. An unnamed US investment group bought the letter written by Wallace Hartley, 33, who led the ship's eight-piece band, which played ragtime and other tunes to calm the passengers as the ship slowly slipped beneath the waves of the north Atlantic. Hartley mailed the letter on April 11, 1912 during the ship's stop in Queenstown, Ireland. The Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15 on its maiden voyage from England with the loss of 1,517 lives.

Goal.com says UEFA have no new concerns over security measures for Euro 2012 despite a series of explosions in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. At least 27 people were injured in the blasts, which local authorities are believed to be treating as the work of terrorists. The city was initially set to be a venur for Euro 2012 but was replaced in 2009 by Kharkiv.

NSBC reports that a Californian man who lived for 94 years with a bullet embedded in his head has died aged 103. William Lawlis Pace was eight years old when in 1917 his older brother accidentally shot him in the face with a bullet from his father’s point 22 caliber rifle. The bullet was never extracted because doctors considered the operation too dangerous and he might have died. In 2006, he was named the Guinness world record-holder for the “longest time to live with a bullet in the head”.

The Irish Enquirer quotes a survey concerning the cleanliness of handbags revealing that the most unhygienic item in the average bag is a bunch of keys – followed by the zip on a purse or wallet and, finally, the handbag zip itself. The study claimed that door and car keys were, on average, 33 per cent dirtier than what is considered to be a “clean” surface. While 53 per cent of people regularly disinfect their phones, only three per cent of people clean their keys.