Valletta’s law courts rang out with cheers yesterday afternoon as 34-year-old Żejtun plasterer Luke Camilleri walked free after a magistrate declared his arrest “null and void” because police had charged him under the wrong section of the Criminal Code. The ruling—delivered in a packed Hall 4—has sent shockwaves across Malta’s tight-knit harbour towns, where gossip…
Air Malta’s freshly-announced non-stop to JFK sounds, on paper, like the island’s aviation holy grail: leave Luqa at 09:00, land in Queens at 13:00 the same day, no wrestling with suitcases in Frankfurt, no 4 a.m. dash through Charles de Gaulle. The first Maltese-flagged aircraft to touch New York since 1989 is being marketed as…
**Sky-High Hopes, Earth-Bound Wallets: Why the New Malta-NYC Direct Route Costs More Than a Sicilian Detour** Sliema wine-bar owner Marisa Camilleri had already drafted the Instagram caption: “Finally serving New Yorkers *our* sunsets without the layover.” Then she saw the price. “€1,280 return in economy? That’s two months of rent in Gżira,” she laughed, half-jokingly…
# €1,000 Fine for Publishing Fenech Chats: Mark Camilleri’s Latest Legal Battle Valletta – In a case that merges freedom of expression with the island’s rawest political wound, historian and publisher Mark Camilleri has been fined €1,000 after a Maltese court found him guilty of disseminating private WhatsApp conversations between murder-plot suspect Yorgen Fenech and…
A dozen Maltese builders, teachers, nurses and students will lock the doors of their limestone homes next Saturday and point their passports towards Guatemala, carrying with them €35,000 in donated tools, medical supplies and—perhaps more importantly—the stubborn Maltese conviction that a neighbour’s wall is never someone else’s problem. Organised by the Gżira-based NGO Spark15 and…
**Prosecutors accuse Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers of ‘delaying’ murder trial** The halls of Malta’s courts have once again become the stage for one of the nation’s most politically charged sagas, as prosecutors accuse lawyers representing murder suspect Yorgen Fenech of intentionally stalling proceedings in the 2017 assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The latest twist…
**Let’s make our balconies green** *From Sliema’s concrete cliffs to Valletta golden-stone tiers, a quiet revolution is unfurling—one geranium, one herb box, one reused tal-ħobż tin at a time.* Walk down any Maltese street at dawn and you will hear it before you see it: the splash of water on wrought iron, the creak of…
**Buġibba Brawl: Viral Video Sparks Debate Over Summer Tensions in Malta’s Party Capital** A 20-second clip shot outside the Kennedy Grove fast-food kiosk on Buġibba’s main strip has racked up 1.4 million views in 24 hours, catapulting the usually sleepy winter town back into the national spotlight. In the footage, a shirtless man—identified by police…
**Last turtle nest of summer begins hatching** *Nature’s final encore draws crowds, scientists, and hope to Għadira Bay* By 5:30 a.m. yesterday, the first orange streaks of dawn were still fighting off the night chill when an excited ripple ran through the knot of pyjama-clad children on Għadira’s wooden board-walk. “It moved!” squealed eight-year-old Maya…
**Aron Mifsud Bonnici Seeks to Dodge Money Laundering Trial with Fine Deal** In a move that has sent ripples through Malta’s tight-knit business community, prominent entrepreneur Aron Mifsud Bonnici has petitioned the courts to settle his money laundering case through a financial penalty rather than face a potentially explosive trial. The request, filed last week…
Aron Mifsud Bonnici, the criminal-law heavyweight whose surname alone evokes centuries of Maltese legal lore, has quietly filed a judicial protest that could snuff out one of the island’s most politically-charged tax-evasion cases before it ever sees a jury. The move, confirmed to Hot Malta by two separate court sources, targets the Commissioner for Revenue…
For 400 years the honey-coloured limestone façade of Dar Saura has watched over Triq il-Kbira in Żejtun like a silent elder, its Baroque balconies shuttered to all but pigeons and passing clouds. This Saturday and Sunday, for the first time in its long life, the doors of one of Malta’s last intact 17th-century urban palazzi…
