Press digest

The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:

The Times reports how a man was given compensation of €100,000 for injuries suffered in a car crash caused by a pothole. The newspaper also gives prominence to the sixtieth anniversary of Mgr Guzeppi Mercieca's priestly ordination.

The Malta Independent says an application for a huge development at Kalkara has been put on hold. The development involves 88 apartments.

In-Nazzjon leads comments by the prime minister that the Nationalist Party  over the past five years carried out a policy in favour of women.

l-orizzont says there is tension between the various sections of staff at Mater Dei Hospital stemming from the bed shortage. The MUMN yesterday said it would not form part of a task force to discuss the bed shortage, in protest over comments by MAM officials.

The overseas press

Greece should know within hours whether it has won crucial support from private creditors to avoid a messy debt default. According to the BBC, the Greek government has indicated that more than 80 per cent of bondholders had agreed to the plan in which creditors were asked to swap their Greek bonds for new ones, at one-third of the value. Greece needs more than 66 per cent of its bond holders to agree to the scheme. The debt write-down is the biggest ever attempted, overshadowing Argentina's €73-billion default in 2002.

Drought has left 13 million people on the brink of a full-scale humanitarian crisis in West Africa. Metro quotes leading British charity Oxfam saying tens of thousands of people in the Sahel region of west and central Africa could die in the coming months if the international community did not distribute much-needed aid immediately.

USA Today says a massive solar storm initially expected to create havoc for everything from mobile phones to airline flights has reached Earth with little effect. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the storm struck in a direction that caused the least amount of problems. However, that orientation could change as the storm continues. The storm is part of the sun's normal 11-year cycle, when activity on the surface rises to its peak level.

Vanguard reports a botched rescue mission in Nigeria has ended with the deaths of a British engineer and his Italian colleague who were reportedly being held hostage by Boko Haram militants. The rescue attempt was apparently led by British and Nigerian forces and was backed by British Prime Minister David Cameron. But it went horribly wrong when Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara were killed as the would-be rescuers moved in. Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan confirmed the deaths and said those responsible had been arrested.

Reuters says Israel asked the US for high-tech weaponry suitable for use against Iran during this week's visit from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, an anonymous Israeli official said Thursday. The White House denies the reports.

ABC says activists are warning that a build-up of Syrian tanks and troops in the province of Idlib indicates a major military operation is imminent. They have raised fears of an assault similar to the one that devastated the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs. Idlib is considered strategically important,

Meanwhile, Al Ahram quotes the UN-Arab League special envoy on Syria, Kofi Annan, saying arming Syrian rebel soldiers "will make this situation worse".  The former UN Secretary-General began a fresh diplomatic push yesterday to seek a solution to the year-old conflict in Syria with a stop in Cairo. Annan, who is due to visit Syria tomorrow, said his mission was to put an end to the violence.

Ansa reports that the United States has listed the Vatican as a state that is vulnerable to money laundering. Appearing for the first time in the US State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy report, the Holy See was classified as a "jurisdiction of concern" alongside 67 other countries such as Yemen, Malaysia, Vietnam and Albania.

Dawn says Osama bin Laden’s three widows have been charged with illegally entering and living in Pakistan. The three have been in detention in Pakistan since May last year, when US commandos raided the house where they, bin Laden and several children were staying. The unilateral American raid, in which commandos killed bin Laden, humiliated and angered the Pakistani army, which has also faced uncomfortable questions over why it wasn’t aware of bin Laden’s presence. Last month, the government destroyed the three-story compound the bin Laden clan was living in, removing a concrete reminder of the country’s association with the world’s most wanted man.

Abendzeitung reports that a Munich court has ruled that a British publisher cannot print excerpts of Adolf Hitler’s memoir “Mein Kampf” in Germany as they would violate the book’s copyright, which is held by the state of Bavaria until 2015. London publisher Peter McGee had proposed reproducing three 16-page segments of “Mein Kampf” with critical commentary as an insert to his weekly magazine Zeitungszeugen, which reproduces Nazi-era newspapers alongside expert analysis.

Hurriyet says Ukrainian Femen activists have been taken into custody as they attempted to stage their trademark nude demonstration in Istanbul. The demonstration was aimed at drawing attention to violence against women and was specifically designed to take place on March 8 International Women's Day. The Femen members fought back when the police tried to intervene but were taken into custody.

According to NewsLeakUK, a Russian group known as the Buranovo Grannies – eight women with an average age of 75 – has swept aside glamorous opposition to represent the country at this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The chorus of their song “Party For Everybody” is in English, but the rest is in Udmurt, a distant relation of Finnish spoken by 325,000 men and women.  Their victory over 24 competitors, follows on from the announcement that Engelbert Humperdinck will represent Great Britain at the contest. The 57th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in May in Baku, Azerbaijan.