Press digest

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

The Times follows up the news that there are no names on the Child Offenders Register.

The Malta Independent highlights yesterday’s political speeches.

In-Nazzjon leads with the call by the prime minister that the government needs a clear vote in order to continue to work in the interest of the country.

l-orizzont quotes Joseph Muscat saying the Opposition would hold the government accountable on the prime minister’s statement that votes in parliament have to be clear and unconditional.

The overseas press:

Voice of Nigeria reports that all 153 passengers and crew died when a Dana Air aircraft crashed into a two-storey building in the densely-populated Nigerian city of Lagos. The DC-10 aircraft, on a flight from Abuja to Lagos, reportedly hit a furniture shop before slamming into an apartment building. More casualties on the ground were likely, but the number was still unknown. On Saturday, an Allied Air Boeing 727 cargo plane coming from Lagos was involved in a crash at the main airport in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. At least 10 people died when the aircraft overshot the runway and hit a small van full of passengers.

Deutsche Welle says European Union leaders have attended a dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of today’s Russia-EU summit on Monday in St Petersburg. The meeting, the first Russia-EU summit since Putin returned to the presidency on May 7, is likely to be dominated by differences over the Syrian crisis. Western leaders have been urging Russia to put more pressure on Syria to implement a UN-backed peace plan aimed at ending 15 months of bloodshed during an anti-government uprising there. While saying it supports the plan put forward by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, Moscow, has consistently refused to back further action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Despite differences on foreign policy, Moscow has stressed that Putin regards Russian-EU ties as being of the utmost importance.

Saudi Arabia has dismissed allegations by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that his country faced a foreign plot. Gulf Times quotes Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accusing Assad of playing for time. Al Thawra says that in an address to parliament, Assad had said Syria was facing an “external onslaught”. He also denied his government's forces had any role in the Houla massacre, in which more than 100 people, many of them children, were killed, most knifed or shot at close range. Assad described the killings as an "ugly crime" that even "monsters" would not carry out.

British nationals all lead with yesterday’s largest river pageant in London for more than 350 years as part of Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee celebrations. The Daily Express says more than 1.25 million people braved the rain and lined the banks of the river Thames to see the royal barge at the head of a flotilla of 1,000 boats portraying Britain’s nautical history. However, a fly-past was cancelled because of the weather. The celebrations continue today with a concert in front of Buckingham Palace, ending with a firework display and more than 4,000 beacons to be lit in the UK and around the world.

Corriere della Sera quotes Pope Benedict saying the focus on making money was undermining the family by creating an unjust society in which people focused primarily on their own selfish concerns. In his homily during an open-air Mass for a million followers, he said such thinking created “ferocious competition, strong inequalities, degradation of the environment” and reduced family relationships “to fragile convergences of individual interests”. Capping three days of activities in Milan, aimed at showing support for the family and strengthening the institution, the pontiff pledged €500,000 to families in severe need in the quake-stricken Emilia-Romagna.

Abuja Inquirer reports 12 people were killed and around 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car fill of explosive into a church in the Nigerian city of Bauchi around 400 kilometers northeast of the capital. It was not clear who was responsible for the attack. The militant Islamist group Boko Haram, has been blamed for hundreds of bomb attacks on churches in Nigeria over the past two years. The group wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, whose population of 160 million is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, most of whom live in the north.

Al Ahram says Egyptian presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister under jailed former President  Hosni Mubarak, has accused his Islamist rival of harassing Christians. Shafiq, who was speaking as protests continued in Cairo over the outcome of Mubarak's trial, said the Muslim Brotherhood aimed to create a "sectarian" state. About 1,000 anti-Mubarak activists remained in Cairo's Tahrir Square, disappointed that the court did not sentence the former president to death. Egypt’s state prosecutor has launched an appeal against the court verdicts.

Ynetnews reports that amid a growing public outcry over the flow of African-born migrants into the country, a law has come into effect in Israel allowing the authorities to detain illegal migrants for up to three years without trial or deportation. Anyone helping illegal migrants, or providing them with shelter, faces up to 15 years’ imprisonment. The government says 60,000 work migrants currently live in Israel with thousands more immigrating to the city every month. More than 2,000 entered the country in May alone through the porous, mostly unfenced border with Egypt.