The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Times reports how legal procurator Peter Paul Zammit was yesterday appointed police commissioner.
The Malta Independent says the ARMS billing system can lead to overcharging.
In-Nazzjon reports that Parliamentary Secretary Franco Mercieca has continued to see patients in private clinics in breach of the code of ethics.
l-orizzont leads with a call by the GWU for inspections to deter precarious work.
The overseas press
Finance ministers from the European Union's six biggest nations have agreed to fight together against tax havens – a move seen as an attempt to persuade Austria to change its strict banking secrecy laws. The Irish Examiner reports that at a joint press conference in Dublin, finance ministers from Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland announced their intentions to boost bank transparency within Europe and beyond. Austria is seen as the last holdout on banking secrecy after Luxembourg announced it would inform other EU countries starting in 2015 about interest earned by their residents. Through tax evasion, EU member states lose €1.3 trillion annually.
The Financial Times says eurozone finance ministers meeting in Dublin have approved the terms for €10 billion in emergency loans for Cyprus. However, recent figures showed the island nation might need a further €6 billion. On Thursday, government spokesman Christos Stylianides did not give a reason for the dramatic increase. The condition of Cyprus receiving the €10 billion in emergency loans was that it needed to raise around €7 billion by itself, which the government is trying to do through spending cuts, banking sector reform and dipping into bank accounts containing more than €100,000. The 17 eurozone finance ministers also agreed to give Ireland and Portugal seven extra years to pay back their bailout loans, which they received to save them from default.
Deutsche Welle reports British Prime Minister David Cameron is in Germany, where is expected to press for EU reform during talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The visit is part of Cameron's drive to press for changes in the EU, such as granting member states the right to opt out of some EU laws. Earlier this year, he announced plans to negotiate a new settlement for Britain and hold a referendum on EU membership by 2017 – if he wins re-election – which was met with strong criticism from Germany and France. Berlin is also skeptical of Cameron's plans.
EurasiaNet says US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in China where he is expected to urge Beijing to use its influence to rein in North Korea. Ahead of the visit, Kerry said that a policy of denuclearisation shared by the US and China had to have "teeth". His four-day tour of Asia comes amid speculation that North Korea is preparing for a missile launch. The US said there was no evidence North Korea could deploy a nuclear-armed missile, contradicting a leaked report. North Korea has reportedly moved at least two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast.
Ansa publishes the result of a survey which shows that four out of five Italians view Pope Francis favourably: 92 per cent of Catholics found him to be close to the faithful, humble, determined, appealing to the young, authoritative, and also sincere. About 77 per cent of non-Catholics expressed similar positive opinions. Although 60 per cent of Italians polled say they want the newly elected pontiff to give top priority to dealing with sexual abuse by priests, that number has fallen from one month ago when as many as 67 per cent wanted the new pope to deal with the long-standing problem of priest paedophilia. According to the poll, 13 per cent of Catholics in Italy said they were attending mass more often because of his appeal.
Sky News reports the Metropolitan police are braced for today’s mass “party” staged by opponents of Margaret Thatcher in London's Trafalgar Square to celebrate the former British prime minister's death. Mayor of London Boris Johnson said the authorities were prepared for potential violence, after trouble erupted at several impromptu street celebrations earlier in the week. Any unrest is likely to feed concerns about security at the Iron Lady's funeral in the capital on Wednesday, which will be attended by Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister David Cameron and 2,000 guests, including many political and world figures.
Beijing has reported its first confirmed case of the latest strain of bird flu virus, which has killed 11 and sickened 32 in eastern China. Xinhua news agency quotes the Beijing Health Bureau saying this morning that a 7-year-old girl, whose parents are in the live poultry trade, was admitted to hospital Thursday. She is in a stable condition. It is the first case reported outside eastern China. A total of 11 people have died of the H7N9 bird flu strain since it was confirmed in humans for the first time last month, with 44 infections in all having been reported to date.
Shanghai and the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui had been the only confirmed locations of infection until the Beijing case.
Contra Costa Times quotes police saying two teenagers in California allegedly tried to rob a woman of her iPhone last week but gave it back because it wasn't modern enough. The April 4 robbery was among a series allegedly committed by the two 17-year-old boys, who were arrested and booked into Juvenile Hall on suspicion of armed robbery after they were tracked down in Berkeley. That robbery happened several minutes after police responded to a man who had been robbed of his laptop and iPhone by two teens in his home. The thieves kept that iPhone. The police nabbed the teens after spotting them driving a car and found them in possession of the stolen items from the earlier robberies. The teens later confessed to committing other robberies.
A Chicago woman is trying to get out of paying a parking fine that has snowballed to more than $105,000 (€80,000). WBBM Radio reports that Jennifer Fitzgerald filed a lawsuit last year against the city over the tickets that police piled up on her car, which was left for nearly three years in a parking lot at O'Hare International Airport. WBBM says a judge dismissed the lawsuit Wednesday and pressed the parties to try harder to reach a settlement. Fitzgerald says she should not be held responsible for the fine because her ex-boyfriend abandoned the car in an employee parking lot at the airport. She says the car is only worth about $600.