The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press. The local media is dominated by yesterday's murder in St Paul's Bay.
Times of Malta reports how a woman was stabbed in her bed yesterday in St Paul's Bay.
In-Nazzjon and l-orizzont say Sylvana Muscat, killed yesterday, has been stabbed five times in the upper part of her body. Her alleged killer was a Libyan man who was her former partner.
l-orizzont also says the UHM's bus strike was a flop and only 36 bus drivers obeyed the union's directives.
The Malta Independent says there are 45-year lease prospects for some government-owned shops in Valletta.
The overseas press
Morgunbladid reports Icelandic opposition leaders have unanimously condemned yesterday’s move by the government to inform the European Union of its decision not to proceed with accession negotiations. Iceland had tried to withdraw its EU bid last January, but cancelled the plan following massive protests over the decision taken without a referendum.
Kathimerini says Greece’s government has confirmed it might raid the country’s pensions and social security system to raise money to meet its huge debt repayments. With Athens having to find €6 billion in the next two weeks alone to pay its creditors, and its bailout frozen, the finance ministry said it is to ask parliament to allow it to raise money from the reserves of state bodies. As he met OECD officials in Paris, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told France24 Greece had “a relatively small cash-flow problem”.
Deutsche Welle reports EU interior ministers have again revived the idea of having transit camps in northern Africa for Europe-bound asylum seekers to avert fatal Mediterranean boat drowning. Austria’s Johanna Mikl-Leitner said that the idea deserved “intensive” discussion”. Germany’s Thomas de Maizière said it “could be a solution,” but needed time for discussion. Other EU nations opposed the proposition. More than 3,000 migrants drowned or died of hypothermia while trying to cross the Mediterranean and slip into Europe last year.
Kremlin officials have denied reports that Vladimir Putin was ill amid mounting speculation about the Russian president’s health. Two state events had been cancelled in recent days and Putin had not been seen in public since a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Moscow on March 5. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Echo of Moscow radio station, “There’s no need to worry, he’s absolutely healthy.”
The rare radioactive substance used to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London could only have come from Russia, a world-leading expert has told the inquiry into the former spy’s murder. The Guardian quotes Norman Dombey, emeritus professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex, saying the polonium was produced at a closed nuclear facility in the city of Sarov, 450 miles south-east of Moscow. Litvinenko died after drinking a cup of tea laced with radioactive polonium-210, during a meeting in November 2006 at a Mayfair hotel. The Kremlin has always insisted that the polonium involved did not come from Russia.
Le Soir reports Europol will set up a special unit to hunt down extremists on the Internet. Spanish Interior Minister Fernandez Diaz said at a meeting of European interior ministers the new unit will be “a global point of reference” and will help prevent “radicalisation and the rise of lone wolves”.
Al Ayyam says Iraqi troops clashed along two fronts with Islamic State militants in Tikrit on Thursday as rockets and mortars echoed across Saddam Hussein’s hometown a day after soldiers and allied Shiite militiamen swept into this Sunni city north of Baghdad. Recapturing Tikrit is seen as a key step toward rolling back the gains of the extremist Islamic State group, which seized much of northern and western Iraq in a blitz last summer and now controls about a third of both Iraq and Syria.
Il Giornale reports Islamic State militants have posted a new threat: “We want Paris before Rome”. According to Rita Katz, the Director and co-founder of the SITE Intelligence Group, in a new audio message Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani says, “If the West and the United States want Isis’ strongholds, Isis wants Paris, Rome and Andalusia afterhaving blown up the White House, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower”. Meanwhile, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-baghdadi welcomed the alliance with the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, Vanguard says, the Nigerian government has officially announced the recapture of 36 locations that had fallen into the hands of militants of Boko Haram. The victories come within a few weeks after the launch, in February, of a Nigerian army offensive weighed in by troops from neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Ansa reports Italy’s cabinet is examining a corporate makeover of the country’s public television service RAI, with the aim of curbing political interference and transforming the network into “one of the biggest cultural enterprises in Europe”. The reform would see RAI Uno, Due and Tre swap their political associations for identities based on content.
Tribune de Genève quotes WHO officials saying Ebola’s toll moved beyond 10,000 deaths as researchers warned of yet another threat to hard-hit West Africa: large outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Ebola derailed child immunizations in the three countries hardest hit by Ebola – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – leaving hundreds of thousands more children vulnerable to the more routine infections.
Wall Street Journal reports fake Inland Revenue Services agents have targeted more than 366,000 people with harassing phone calls demanding payments and threatening jail in the largest scam of its kind in the history of the agency. A Federal investigator said more than 3,000 people fell for the ruse since 2013. They were conned out of a total of $15.5 million.