The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press.
Times of Malta and the Malta Independent lead with the loss of some 700 migrants at sea on Saturday-Sunday night. The two newspapers also report on how the PN won the local election in St Paul’s Bay.
l-orizzont quotes Joseph Muscat saying at a PL activity that ‘the best is yet to come’.
In-Nazzjon quotes Simon Busuttil saying the councils results encouraged and motivates the PN.
The overseas press
Ansa says there are conflicting reports of the number of people on board a 20-metre vessel which had left a Libyan port 50 km from Tripoli and capsized.. A Bangladeshi survivor told Italian authorities 950 people were aboard, including hundreds who had been locked in the hold by smugglers. Earlier, a survivor told them 700 migrants were on board. Only 28 survivors have been rescued and 24 bodies picked up. The migrants were from Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Zambia, Bangladesh and Ghana.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told CNN the deaths were “nothing less than genocide”as human traffickers, who he described as “gangs of criminals” were putting them on the road to death”.
Metro quotes Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond saying finding traffickers and punishing them was one way of dealing with such crises.
EU leaders agreed that a new strategy was urgently needed. Le Monde reports President Hollande pressed for “more boats, more aerial surveillance and an intensified fight against trafficking”. The German Commissioner for Migration,, Aydan Özuguz, criticized the bloc’s abolition last year of the “Mare Nostrum” sea rescue operation, saying it had been an “illusion” that stopping the programme would deter people from undertaking the perilous voyage from Africa to Europe.
Sweden’s Migration Minister Morgan Johansson insisted with Sveriges Radio on more countries take responsibility for refugees.
Deutsche Welle reports Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said it was essential to stabilize countries like Libya to prevent boat tragedies.
The New York Times reports Antonio Guterres, head of UNHCR, said the need of the hour was a “robust rescue-at-sea operation”. He called on the EU to deploy stronger search and rescue teams and increase legal avenues for migration.
In other news...
Addis Admass says Ethiopian officials are working to verify a video apparently showing a mass killing of Christians from the country by Islamic State militants in Libya. The 29-minute video comes a day after the Afghan president blamed the extremists for a suicide attack in his country that killed at least 35 people – widening the circle of nations affected by the group’s atrocities while showing its growth beyond a self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Helsingin Sanomat reports Finland’s Centre Party, led by self-made millionaire Juha Sipila, won yesterday’s national elections. Sipila, a 53-year-old engineer by training, has promised to inject new life into the 204-billion-euro economy by creating 200,000 private-sector jobs over the next decade and promoting business-friendly policies including more predictable tax laws.
Figures provided by TV station BRT shows the presidential election in the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (recognized only by Ankara) is heading to a second round after no candidate bagged enough votes to claim outright victory. Incumbent Dervis Eroglu will go toe-to-toe with independent Mustafa Akinci in the runoff. With 96 per cent of the ballots counted, 77-year-old president won 32 of the votes cast.
A poll for The Sun shows the British Labour Party is ahead by one percentage point compared to the Conservatives in the polls ahead of elections next May 7. The figure show 35 per cent favour Ed Miliband as prime minister and 34 per cent David Cameron. The anti-European UKIP are still at 13 per cent.
The FBI is in turmoil after it was forced to acknowledge, after a scoop of The Washington Post, that in 20 years at least 60 people charged with crimes carrying the death penalty, were found guilty on the basis of wrongful data provided by their laboratories on microscopic examination of hair. In three cases the condemned were executed. In a statement, the agency said the tests are no longer used having been replaced by the DNA analysis of hair.
Al Ahram says an Egyptian court has sentenced 11 football fans to death in the retrial of more than 70 defendants accused over a riot in 2012 that left 74 people dead. All death sentences in Egypt require the advisory opinion of the country’s leading religious authority, the Grand Mufti.