The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
Times of Malta reports how there were 19 reports of slurry use in fields in two years.
The Malta Independent says four teenage girls dared each other to get pregnant by the same man, according to comments on a radio programme.
MaltaToday says a gas supply agreement will be signed this week.
In-Nazzjon says the finance minister did not know what declaration of assets he had to make.
l-orizzont says Malta is among the best EU countries in job creation.
The overseas press
USA Today reports President Obama has described Boko Haram as a “horrendous organisation which causes havoc in people’s daily lives”. He said he thought the kidnapping last month of more than 200 schoolgirls by the organisation could be the event that mobilized the world to do something about Boko Haram. Earlier, it was announced that the Americans were preparing to deploy a team of military, law enforcement and hostage negotiators to Nigeria to assist in locating the girls.
Tribune de Genève reports the Vatican has revealed that over the past decade, it had defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties. The Vatican’s UN ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a UN committee monitoring implementation of the UN treaty against torture.
Kurier reports the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe has issued an appeal for a ceasefire in Ukraine so that presidential elections could take place on May 25. The plea, by OSCE’s Swiss president Didier Burkhalter at a foreign ministers’ meeting of the European Council in Vienna, was echoed by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, who said his country had called on its partners to end Russian provocations in Ukraine in order to go ahead with the elections.
According to Kyiv Post, the number of civil casualties in Ukraine has been climbing steadily since Friday as the Kiev regime continued to tighten its grip on the southeastern territories as part of an “active phase” of an ongoing military operation. Last week, Ukraine saw the bloodiest violence since the February overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, with dozens killed in clashes across the country and scores of anti-coup activists burned alive inside an Odessa building. The Speaker of Russia’s Lower House, Serghei Naryshkin, currently visiting Serbia, has said the world was facing “a genocide of Russians and Ukrainians”.
In an interview with European newspapers, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that Ukraine was close to all-out conflict, and more needed to be done to prevent a new Cold War.
Ansa reports energy ministers of the G7 group of the world’s wealthiest industrial nations met in Rome to discuss alternatives to Russian natural gas supplies. Europe buys about a third of its gas from Russia.
Le Soir reports a planned tax on transactions would come into force in 10 member countries in January 2016. But some nations remain opposed to the levy. Meeting in Brussels, EU finance ministers said they expected the levy to generate “considerable revenues”. But the tax has been facing criticism from a number of non-participating EU nations, and from some business associations which fear the levy may have a negative impact on business investment.
Ansa reports fear of a “crucifixion killer” stalking Florence for at least 10 years have been raised by an attack on a woman strapped to a bar and tortured to death on Monday. The police said there were “six or seven similar cases” to that of the 26-year-old Romanian prostitute, Andrea Cristina Zamfir, found dead on the outskirts of the Tuscan capital after being sexually tortured and left to die slowly, struggling to free herself from her bonds. They said there was a “real possibility that a new serial killer is on the rampage”.
Monica Lewinsky, the one-time White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment in the US Senate has broken her long silence in the media. In a piece in Vanity Fair, she said she deeply regretted her relationship with him. The president "took advantage" of her, she writes, though she describes their relationship as consensual.