Press digest

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

The Sunday Times of Malta reveals how Muammar Gaddafi had threatened an oil spill off Malta in 2011 during the uprising.  It also reports that La Valette's sword is to be returned to Malta...on loan.

The Malta Independent on Sunday says Labour is not giving details of its spending on the electoral campaign. Like The Sunday Times of Malta is also carries interviews with the PN leadership contenders.

MaltaToday says the Olaf report on John Dalli is being published. It also quotes Paul Borg Olivier reiterating that the whole PN administration should go.

Il-Mument says more Labour ministers are breaking the ministerial code of ethics through private practice.

It-Torca says Gozo Channel expected to make a €3m loss in two years.

Illum says the prime minister is considering not having parliament in the former Freedom Square. 

KullHadd carries an interview with Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia, who speaks on his determination to stamp out drugs from the prisons.

The overseas press

Frettabladid reports Iceland's centre-right opposition has taken an early lead in the country's parliamentary elections, as voters punished the leftist coalition saying that its austerity policies are too painful. With two-thirds of votes tallied, the Independence party had 26.5 per cent and the Progressive party 22 per cent, putting them on track for nearly 40 of the 63 seats. The ruling Social Democrats are trailing with 13.5 per cent. The win for the centre-right could stop the island nation's EU membership talks.

Italy's newly nominated Prime Minister Enrico Letta will be sworn in this morning after unveiling yesterday a new cabinet full of fresh faces, including more women than ever and the country's first ever non-white minister. Ansa says the cabinet is the most diverse Italy has seen – in terms of gender (seven of 21 minister are women), race, and, most likely, in terms of party affiliation as well – and is also the youngest group of ministers in recent memory. That is a fitting characteristic for 46-year-old Letta, Italy's youngest prime minister since 1954. Angelino Alfano, the head of Berlusconi's party, will be deputy prime minister and the interior minister, former European Commissioner Emma Bonino is foreign minister and Fabrizio Saccomanni, deputy head of the Bank of Italy, is finance minister. Letta won't actually start governing until the government passes a vote of confidence in parliament.

The official Egyptian news agency MENA has announced that Egyptian police have arrested 12 members of the "Black Bloc" – a violent group opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood – after clashes outside Cairo's presidential palace. Protesters hurled rocks and fire bombs at the walls of the presidential palace in Heliopolis, and torched a police vehicle. Police fired tear gas to disperse the masked activists.

Danish scientists are expecting results that would show that “finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible”. The Sunday Telegraph reports they are conducting clinical trials to test a “novel strategy” in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system. The move would represent a dramatic step forward in the attempt to find a cure for the virus, which causes Aids. Meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Times, US federal researchers shut down a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine involving about 2,500 subjects after it is found to be ineffective at preventing healthy subjects from contracting the virus.

TV Asahi reports a Dreamliner test flight, with top Boeing and All Nippon Airways' executives aboard, took off from a Tokyo airport this morning – three months after the worldwide fleet of 787s was grounded. ANA chairman Shinichiro Ito and Boeing chief executive Ray Conner were aboard the flight, as Boeing and one of its largest Dreamliner customers ANA seek to reassure passengers that the planes are safe.

NBC News says James Everett Dutschke, a 41-year-old martial arts instructor, was arrested by the FBI in Tupelo, Mississippi and charged of possessing and using ricin (a lethal poison) as a weapon. He is accused of sending poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, a US Senator and a judge. If convicted, Dutschke could get a life sentence.

Asia Times reports an American would be tried in North Korea where he is accused of attempting to overthrow the Communist regime. The American, Pae Jun-Ho, is a 44-year-old tourist tour operator, who was arrested in November while entering the port city of Rason, on the north-eastern coast, near the border with China and Russia. According to the state press agency KCNA, he “has already confessed to crimes and hostility against the DPRK”.

Bangla Times says police in Bangladesh have taken six people into custody in connection with the collapse of a shoddily-constructed building that killed at least 348 people, as rescue workers admitted Saturday that voices of survivors were getting weaker after four days of being pinned under the increasingly unstable rubble. Still, in a boost for the rescuers, 29 survivors were pulled out Saturday.

The Journal reports minting every 1c coin is costing the Irish Central Bank 1.65c and a plan now recommends a pilot scheme in one Irish town where retailers and shoppers would be encouraged not to offer 1c or 2c coins as payment for a transaction – rounding bills to the nearest 5c when paying with cash. Similar schemes are already in use throughout Finland and the Netherlands, where the small coins are still legal tender but rarely used in practice.

Clint Eastwood may be 82 years old, but he dreams of making films for two more decades. In a wide-ranging conversation on Fox News about the art of film directing, Eastwood expressed admiration for the 104-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. “It would be great to be 105 and still making films,” Eastwood said. Chuckling, he called such a hope “the ultimate optimism”. Eastwood last directed 2011's “J. Edgar”, a biopic of the FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. After acting in last year's baseball drama “Trouble With the Curve”, he has several films in development.

Former Marseille defender Eric Di Meco might think twice before making his next bet.  Fox Sports reports that way back in 2010, when right back Cesar Azpilicueta signed with Marseille from Osasuna, the club’s president at the time, Jean-Claude Dassier, declared Azpilicueta “the future right full back of the Spanish national team”. Di Meco wasn’t impressed, and was confident enough in his assessment of the defender that he declared, “if that happens, I’ll eat a rat”. Since then, Azpilicueta has moved to Chelsea and made his debut with the Spanish national team. He started against Uruguay, and played all 90 minutes in Spain’s 3-1 win back in February. So, Di Meco kept his word, and ate a rat on live radio while the video cameras rolled. At least he had a glass of wine nearby to wash it down.