The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times reports how Malta’s deficit this year will exceed the EU’s 3% threshold but the government hopes to restore the situation within a year. It also reports how Mario de Marco has entered the race to be PN leader.
The Malta Independent quotes Joseph Muscat saying the deficit will be reduced to less than 3% by the end of the year.
In-Nazzjon leads with the nominations of Mario de Marco and Raymond Bugeja for the PN leadership election on May 4.
l-orizzont says the national deficit is higher than projected by the former PN government. It also says that industrial action on the bus service has been averted.
The overseas press
Expresso announces the Portuguese cabinet is scheduled to meet today to discuss the country’s Constitutional Court decision that parts of the country's 2013 austerity budget was “unconstitutional”. The centre-right government had agreed to widespread belt-tightening in exchange for emergency international loans worth €78 billion. The panel of 13 judges citied four reductions in particular as unconstitutional: a drop in holiday pay for civil servants, pension payment reductions, and cuts in unemployment and sickness benefits. It said the measures did not guarantee equality, with private sector staff unaffected by the measures.
The Times says tensions in the Korean peninsula continue as North Korea warned foreign embassies in Pyongyang that it would be “unable to protect” them in the event of an all-out conflict. The announcement intensified the North’s war of nerves with South Korea and the United States. It came as South Korea sent naval ships to monitor the possible launch of medium-range missiles by its northern neighbour. The warning was delivered in a meeting of embassy representatives at which North Korean officials repeated that the peninsula was being driven into war by joint military exercises by the US and South Korea
South Korea's bishops have asked the Pope to act as a peace mediator amid the escalating nuclear tension in the Asian peninsula. Mgr Peter Kang U-il, bishop of Cheju, told the Fides Agency that “the dominating sentiment amongst the South Korena population isn't so much fear but concern and bitterness for the current situation” and that “a contemporary war, with the lethal weapons that exist, would be a catastrophe for all involved”. Last month, in his first Easter Sunday message as pontiff, Pope Francis had called for the easing of tensions between North and South Korea.
CNN reports victims' advocates were unimpressed with Pope Francis’ call for the Catholic Church to act “with determination” against clergy sex abuse cases. The pope pushed for decisive action during a meeting with the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. The US-based group SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, reacted with scepticism. Barbara Dorris, victims outreach director, said there was a need for action rather than words and the new pope should be ordering a change of track rather than a continuation on the same course.
According to CTVNews, a massive poultry cull was underway in China as the country announced a sixth human death from a new bird flu strain on Friday. The sale of live fowl has also been halted. Sixteen people have fallen ill with the flu along China’s eastern seaboard. Some of them are in critical condition. There has been no evidence to suggest that the virus has been spreading from one person to another, but scientists are monitoring the situation closely.
Euronews reports the Islamist group Hamas has urged the United Nations relief and food agency to resume its operations in the Gaza Strip despite a violent protest. All the UN agency’s offices have been closed after demonstrators called for a reversal of a decision to cut an annual €35 handout to the poorest Gazans. The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, called for urgent talks with UN food agency directors and promised that their “staff and facilites would be safe”.
Panamericana TV quotes scientists reporting that glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes, that took at least 1,600 years to form, has melted in just 25 years – the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance. Rapid melting of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet, has uncovered plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago.
President Barack Obama has called California Attorney General Kamala Harris from Air Force One to apologise for calling her the "best-looking attorney general in the country". The remarks, made during a fundraiser in California, sparked a swift backlash among political commentators and Obama called Harris a few hours later to apologise. According to The New York Times, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Obama and Harris “are old friends and good friends and he did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general’s professional accomplishments and her capabilities". He added that Obama “fully recognises the challenge women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance”.
Times of India reports a multi-storey building under construction has collapsed near Mumbai, killing at least 45 people – 16 children, 18 men and 11 women – and injuring 70 others. Emergency and police teams rescued about 50 people from the rubble. Many of the victims were migrant laborers. Rescue operations continued some 24 hours after the tragedy for more people who could be trapped under 20 feet of rubble.
Le Parisien says Paris officials have come up with an eco-friendly way to keep the city’s grass trim – by enlisting hungry sheep to replace gas-guzzling lawnmowers. The initiative, which started this week, sees four sheep from an island in Brittany put to work munching the bountiful grass of the Paris Archives. The eco-experiment, which could expand around the capital from October, follows on from a stint last year by two goats that the Louvre hired to mow the lawn of Paris’ famed Tuileries gardens. Already, private companies have hundreds of operational sheep mowing lawns of big companies around Paris.