The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
The Sunday Times of Malta says the Cabinet overhaul came three days early.
The Malta Independent on Sunday also gives prominence to the Cabinet reshuffle. It also reports how a troubled teenager was tormented on Ask.fm.
MaltaToday says the health minister resigned and the prime minister tweeted a picture of them together.
It-Torca's heading is simply Cabinet Changes. It also says fiscal incentives may be offered to workers with a low income.
Il-Mument says there was an earthquake in the Muscat government after a year.
KullHadd leads with the new ministerial appointments. It also says the fisheries cooperative has welcomed plans for a new Marsaxlokk breakwater.
Illum also lists the new ministerial appointments.
The overseas press
ABC reports 10 aircraft are heading to the new area to join 10 ships continue the international search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight after a Chinese and an Australian ship failed to identify remains picked up after their first day in a new search area the size of Poland.
France 24 says US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Paris for a new round of talks this evening on the Ukraine crisis with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Meanwhile, Krymskaya Pravda reports hundreds of people gathered at a railway station in the Crimean capital Simferopol to watch the station clock be moved forward two hours to Moscow time. There was loud applause and the Russian anthem was sung at the ceremony.
Slovensky Rozhlas announces that millionaire philanthropist and political newcomer Andrej Kiska has trounced Slovakia’s veteran prime minister Robert Fico in the race to become the next president.
Le Journal du Dimanche says French voters head to the polls today for the second round of municipal elections. The first round saw President François Hollande’s Socialist Party struggling while the extreme right National Front made significant gains.
Sky Turk reports that polls have opened in municipal elections in Turkey which have been turned into a referendum on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
La Sicilian quotes the leader of Italy’s New Centre-Right Party, Angelino Alfano, saying Europe was choking Italy with its austerity. Alfano said during a party rally in Sicily, “I don’t like this Europe because we cannot have a European Union that focuses on the diameter of watermelons while ignoring development and employment. The EU must change its economic policies, with no more German fear of inflation while their austerity measures are killing us.”
Meanwhile, Il Tempo says an Italian businessman climbed out onto a ledge on the dome of St Peter’s Basilica yesterday, calling for the Pope’s help for those hit hard by Italy’s deep recession.
Huffington Post reports Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge plunged into darkness for the Earth Hour environmental campaign, among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for the event. Lights went out in some 7,000 cities and towns from New York to New Zealand for Earth Hour which this year aims to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for green projects.
Avvenire says Rome police, in cooperation with Vatican Gendarmerie officers, have arrested and American and a Dutch who wanted to swindle the Vatican Bank by depositing billions of euros and US dollars in fake bonds in the Vatican bank. Counterfeit securities worth billions of euros have been seized. One of the suspects had three passports.
According to a report in the Sun, Corinna, the wife of former German pilot Michael Schumacher has started work in a luxurious villa on Lake Geneva to prepare a room with the most modern medical equipment and continue to take care of her husband in a more familiar environment. The changes, says the newspaper, have already cost £10 million, (€12 million). The seven-time F1 world champion is coma at a hospital in Grenoble. The family is prepared for a future of permanent immobility.
Turning the clocks forward an hour in the spring for daylight saving time is followed by a spike in heart attacks on the Monday afterward, says a US study published in Open Heart. But when the clocks fall back and people gain an hour of sleep, there is a drop in heart attacks on Tuesday, said the research presented at the American College of Cardiology conference. There was an average of 93 heart attacks the Monday before compared to 125 the week after the start of daylight saving time across those four years. Daylight saving time – implemented to save energy during World War I – is controversial and some believe it is not needed any more.