The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times of Malta leads with Moody's report on Malta, saying it is a boost for the economy. It also reports on the appointment of the AFM's deputy commander.
In-Nazzjon says a civil servant has become the sacrificial lamb to protect a minister, adding that there are doubts about Gozo Channel's version of how a ferry turned back to pick up passengers.
The Malta Independent says the Maltese passport is the ninth best in the world to own because of unfettered access to 163 destinations.
l-orizzont leads with the confirmation of the GWU central administration and the announcement that a designate-general secretary will be appointed to eventually take over from Tony Zarb.
The overseas press
The main story in most Italian papers is the decision by a Senate panel to strip Silvio Berlusconi of his seat in parliament after the Supreme Court upheld a tax-fraud conviction against the ex-premier in August, making it definitive. Corriere della Sera quotes the billionaire media magnate saying the vote was a violation “of the State based on the rule of law” and hit at “the heart of democracy”. He added that it was a “shameful” verdict that sought to eliminate him.
TGcom24 reports rough seas forced Italian divers to postpone their search for more than 200 migrants still unaccounted for after their boat sank off Lampedusa. Rescuers have so far found 111 bodies, and 155 people have been pulled alive from the seas. Prime Minister Enrico Letta called on the European Union to avoid another tragedy by increasing its level of intervention and action. He announced that the victims of Thursday's migrant-boat disaster had been posthumously awarded Italian citizenship. Pope Frances also referred to the tragedy, lamenting that the world “does not care about the many people fleeing slavery, hunger, fleeing in search of freedom”
The Irish Times says the International Monetary Fund has slashed its growth forecasts for Ireland after predicting weaker consumer demand and export growth for the bailed-out eurozone nation. The IMF said it expects Ireland's economy to grow by 0.6 percent this year compared with a previous forecast of 1.1 percent. Ireland is meanwhile set to unveil another painful austerity budget later this month.
Cairo Radio announces violence has returned to Egypt with at least five people killed in clashes in the capital and in other cities during Islamist protests supporting former President Mohamed Morsi. With Friday's protests the Muslim Brotherhood had planned to return to the political stage, following the August 14 repression that banned the movement and saw its most important leaders arrested.
Fox News says a man set himself on fire on the National Mall in the nation's capital as passers-by rushed over to help douse the flames, officials and witnesses said Friday afternoon. The reason for the self-immolation was not immediately clear and the man's identity was not disclosed. But it occurred in public view, on a central national gathering place, in a city still rattled by a mass shooting last month and a high-speed car chase outside the US Capitol on Thursday that ended with a woman being shot dead by police.
El Pais reports a Spanish court has convicted 53 people in the country’s biggest corruption trial, which lasted two years and centered on widespread property fraud and bribery in the southern jet-set resort town of Marbella.The defendants in the trial, which ended last year, included former town hall officials, lawyers and business representatives. The judge took several months to decide on the sentences. Forty 40 other people were acquitted and two accused died while the case was being prepared.
US pop icon Madonna was raped at knifepoint when she was young and newly arrived in New York, she reveals in an article in Harper's Bazaar. Describing her arrival in the Big Apple from the Midwest, where she grew up, she wrote: “New York wasn't everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms,” and described “paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked”. The 55-year-old singer recalls she was sexually abused by a stranger at knifepoint shortly after arriving in New York City to pursue her dreams of stardom.
Too many priests deliver homilies that are boring, interminable and incomprehensible, Pope Francis said yesterday. Ansa reports that in off-the-cuff remarks during a visit to Assisi, the pope warned his clergy to think carefully about the content of their sermons. Enough of “these (kinds of) homilies – endless, tedious, in which you do not understand anything,” Francis said at a meeting with clergy in Assisi's Cathedral of San Rufino. The pope was in Assisi to mark the feast day of the 13th-century saint he took his name from.