The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times carries an interview with Air Malta CEO Peter Davies, who reports an “extremely positive result” by the airline.
MaltaToday says Joseph Muscat met an heir of the owners of the National Bank to discuss the way forward.
The Malta Independent and In-Nazzjon say the government will build a new campus for the Institute for Tourism Studies.
l-orizzont reports that Daphne Caruana Galizia’s husband was paid €70 an hour for consultancy work for the Inland Revenue Department. The information was given in Parliament.
The overseas press
The EU's Economic Affairs Commissioner Oli Rehn has said the European debt crisis was at a "turning point" and today’s EU leaders' summit in Brussels was an "opportunity to seize the momentum for growth". EU Observer says that he told MEPs that deficits were falling across Europe, cutting borrowing costs, but that every euro spent on servicing debt was a euro less for jobs and investments. However, Rehn warned that there was no silver bullet for economic growth; if there were, "it would already have been fired".
Earlier the OECD downgraded its growth forecasts for the eurozone economies, stating that the crisis in the single currency area was the most significant risk to the global economy. The Financial Times quotes the Paris-based international organisation saying that the global economy was, once again, trying to return to growth with the US, Japan and emerging economies showing steady recoveries. However, the progress was threatened by the new crisis in the eurozone. So long as the eurozone crisis did not escalate, the OECD was forecasting a modest contraction of 0.1 per cent in the eurozone economy this year, compared with growth of 2.4 per cent in the US and 2 per cent in Japan.
Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old leader of Greece's Radical Left party Syriz , has said he did not want to leave the eurozone. Der Spiegel reports that during a visit to Berlin, he told reporters that he would scrap austerity if he won the June election, and that no one, not even mighty Germany, had the right to evict Greece from the currency. Syriza, which came second in the May 6 election, is expected to emerge as the strongest political force in the repeat vote on June 17.
Greece should default on its debt and negotiate a relaxation of the austerity measures demanded by the eurozone, a former policymaker of Argentina has advised. Mario Blejer, who led Argentina from bankruptcy to double-digit growth, has told Sky News it was "impossible" for Greece to operate in a situation where the debt, after the recent voluntary restructuring, still stood at around 160 per cent of GDP. In addition to that the debt-to-GDP ratio was not going down because the output was shrinking faster than the debt.
El Pais says tens of thousands of school teachers, university lecturers and students went on strike in Madrid, Barcelona and other Spanish cities on Tuesday to protest deep cuts to the country's education sector as part of austerity measures aimed at reining in the country's public debt. Some took to the streets in demonstrations, with tombs being erected in front of universities to symbolize the view that the country's schooling system was dying. Threatening to put 100,000 substitute teachers out of work, the cuts in government spending have led to a lack of teachers, larger class sizes, increased university fees, and a declining number of extra-curricular activities.
In the UK, both the Daily Express and The Daily Mail focus on the European Court of Human Rights’ judgment that prisoners were to be allowed to vote. The court declared that the blanket ban on inmates in England and Wales voting was unlawful. The British government now has to decide whether to comply with the ruling or defy the order and face paying out more than £150 million (€186.5 million) in compensation to convicts. The Express said the ruling provoked outrage among British MPs, and the Mail called it a "contempt for our democracy".
Tunisia has decided to extradite former Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who has been detained in Tunisia since his arrest last September. Le Jour says the decision was taken after the Libyans pledged to respect Mahmoudi and to give him a fair trial. Al-Mahmoudi was a key and longstanding figure within the inner political circle of Muammar Gadhafi.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle reports that in a fresh round of violence rocket-propelled grenades have hit the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and a branch of the Sahara Bank in Benghazi. There were no injuries. The attacks marked a continuation of a pattern of violence in recent months. In April a courthouse was bombed, causing damage to the building and wounding four people.
Al Ahram says 50 million Egyptians head to the polls today in their first free presidential election, 15 months after ousting Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring uprising. Thirteen people are contesting the poll. Some of them are former ministers in the Mubarak regime, while others are Islamist candidates or Salafists. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which assumed presidential powers in February 2011, has promised a fair ballot followed by civilian rule. A run-off vote is scheduled for 16 and 17 June if there is no outright winner.
ABC reports that Eugene Polley, the man who invented the first wireless remote control for television in 1955, has died at the age of 96. His long-time employer Zenith Electronics, a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Electronics formerly known as Zenith Radio Corporation, said he died of natural causes in Chicago on Sunday. Polley joined Zenith Radio in 1935.
A senior Ukrainian Olympic official has been suspended after a BBC investigation showed he was willing to sell 2012 tickets for cash. Volodymyr Gerashchenko, of Ukraine's National Olympic Committee, told a BBC reporter posing as a UK tout he would have up to 100 tickets to sell. It is a criminal offence, punishable by fines of up to €25,000, to sell London 2012 tickets to touts.