The following are the main stories on some of the foreign newspapers today. Newspapers are not issued in Malta today, Good Friday.
Ria Novosti reports official, media, and popular reaction to the tentative agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme runs from one extreme to the other. The agreement covers five different areas: enrichments, inspections and transparency, reactors and reprocessing, sanctions, and phasing. The draft has to be refined into a formal accord by June 30. Once the IAEA confirms that Iran has completed all the nuclear-related requirements, US and EU nuclear-related sanctions would be lifted. Any backsliding by Iran, the US has warned, means the sanctions come back as well.
The Jerusalem Post says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced “strong opposition” to the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear development programme. Speaking with President Obama by phone, Netanyahu said the plan of action, which emerged from the final round of talks in Lausanne, “would threaten the survival of Israel”.
Le Parisien quotes French prosecutor Brice Robin saying there is still “reasonable hope” that the second black box from the crashed Germanwings flight could be useful despite the extent of damage which has left it “completely blackened”. The second flight recorder was recovered yesterday following a nine-day search in the crash site area in southern France. Meanwhile, it was announced that 150 sets of DNA have also been found.
The New York Times quotes a UN report saying more than 25,000 foreign fighters from 100 nations have travelled to join militant groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. It said the number of foreign fighters worldwide had soared by 71 per cent between the middle of 2014 and March 2015. Syria and Iraq were by far the biggest destinations and had become a “finishing school for extremists”.
CBS reports analysts from the Pew Research Centre predict over the next four decades, Islam is expected to grow faster than any other major religion worldwide, with the Muslim population nearly matching Christians in both number and share of the global population. Projections estimate Christians will remain the largest religious group, increasing to 2.92 billion adherents by 2050 if current demographic trends continue. But Muslims will reach 2.76 billion, making each faith group about 30 per cent of the world population.
According to Panapress, Al-Shabab gunmen rampaged through a university in northeastern Kenya at dawn yesterday, killing 147 people in the group’s deadliest attack in the East African country. Four militants were slain by security forces to end the siege just after dusk. The masked attackers singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy. Reports say some Christian students were also beheaded.
USA Today reports two women have been arrested in New York on charges they plotted to wage violent jihad by building a homemade bomb and using it for a Boston Marathon-type attack. One of the women, Noelle Velentzas, had been “obsessed with pressure cookers since the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013” and made jokes alluding to explosives after receiving one as a gift, according to a criminal complaint.
Dawn says Pakistani military courts have sentenced six Islamic militants to death on charges including terrorism, murder, suicide bombing and kidnapping for ransom. A seventh suspect was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Officials from Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar are travelling to remote islands in eastern Indonesia to investigate how thousands of foreign fishermen were abused and forced into catching seafood that could end up in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. The visits come a week after The Associated Press published a story about slavery in the seafood industry — including video of men locked in a cage.
Ansa reports three more clients of two 14- and 15-year-old girls, who shocked Rome by their involvement in a prostitution racket, have received prison sentences of a year and fines of €1,200 each Thursday after agreeing to plead guilty. Last year the man convicted of masterminding the racket, Mirko Ieni, received a 10-year prison sentence while one of the girls’ mothers received a six-year term for encouraging her daughter.
It’s a case of two shades of blue: According to Deutsche Welle, two household names in the cosmetics industry, Nivea and Dove, have squared off in a German courtroom over the use of a particular shade of dark blue on their product packaging. The hearing, which took place in front of a high court in Karlsruhe, marked the latest legal squabble here over companies’ claims to specific hues and highlighted the importance of colours in corporate marketing strategies.