Valletta among least affordable EU cities for locals to dine out, study finds For generations of Maltese, the ritual was sacred: knock off work, meet friends at a kerb-side table, and nurse a €2 espresso while the city’s limestone walls turned honey-gold at dusk. That everyday pleasure is slipping out of reach, according to a…
**Ex-Steward Malta CEO Armin Ernst Pleads Not Guilty to Hospitals Deal Charges as Nation Watches Courtroom Drama Unfold** The ghosts of Malta’s most controversial healthcare deal returned to haunt the nation yesterday as former Steward Malta CEO Armin Ernst pleaded not guilty to charges ranging from money laundering to fraud in connection with the hospitals…
**“A Real-Estate Bonanza”: When Gaza Becomes a Trump-Style Deal and Valletta Listens In** Sliema balconies were still dripping from last night’s storm when the headline flashed across Maltese phones: Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had called Gaza “the greatest real-estate bonanza in the world” and claimed the file was already on Donald Trump’s…
**Thrown to the Virus: How Malta’s Prison Walls Became a COVID Cage** The call to prayer had just faded over Paola when the news broke: Malta’s own prison authorities had locked a healthy man in a cell with two COVID-positive inmates, then left him there for 14 days. By the time the European Court of…
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…
Valletta shop-owner Maria Spiteri still remembers the day her 72-year-old father agreed to put the family’s 50-year-old ironmongery online. “He watched me scan a €3 packet of screws into the new web-shop and whispered, ‘Nistgħu naraw jekk jixtru minn Għawdex ukoll?’” Two months later, 18 % of the store’s sales were coming from Gozo, and…
# €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…
# Trump-Starmer Summit: What Malta Stands to Gain as Two Titans Meet After Royal Red Carpet Buckingham Palace’s grand chandeliers had barely cooled after Tuesday’s pomp-filled welcoming ceremony for U.S. President Donald Trump when the real heat moved indoors. Over white-gloved tea service, King Charles III smiled politely; across the Atlantic, Maltese policymakers leaned closer…
