# Russia-Belarus War Games Send Shivers Through Valletta Cafés: “It’s 1979 All Over Again,” Say Veterans Valletta’s morning espresso ritual felt different today. Outside Café Cordina, pensioners who once huddled through the 1979 Soviet arms-ship crisis glanced at their phones and saw the same two flags—Russia’s white-blue-red and Belarus’s red-green—snaking across European newsfeeds. Moscow and…
Valletta – “The greatest challenge of our time is not traffic or construction—it’s the empty cradle,” Finance Minister Clyde Caruana told parliament this week, waving a sheet of statistics that showed Malta’s total fertility rate has slipped to 1.05 children per woman, the lowest ever recorded on the islands and barely half the replacement level…
**PN Slams Government’s ‘So-Called’ Planning Reform, Demands Complete Withdrawal Amid Heritage Fears** Valletta – The Nationalist Party has fired a blistering broadside at Robert Abela’s administration, formally submitting a 38-page rebuttal that brands the proposed planning reform “a cultural bulldozer in a tailor-made suit”. PN leader Bernard Grech personally delivered the document to the Planning…
Gorillaz’ 2026 World Tour Lands in Malta: Virtual Band, Real Impact on the Rock Sliema’s sunrise was still smearing peach across the cranes yesterday when Damon Albarn’s unmistakable drawl crackled through every wireless speaker on the promenade. “Malta, we’re coming,” the Gorillaz front-man declared in a 30-second video dropped at 7 a.m., confirming that the…
**Man Seriously Injured After Fall in St Julian’s Establishment** A man remains in critical condition following a serious fall at a popular entertainment venue in St Julian’s late Friday night, according to police reports. The incident occurred at approximately 2:30 AM at an establishment along the bustling Paceville strip, Malta’s premier nightlife destination. The 34-year-old…
Valletta’s Parliament may sit 1,400 km from New York’s East River, but when the UN General Assembly votes this Thursday on a resolution that would recognise a Hamas-free Palestinian state, the ripple will be felt in every Maltese living-room, parish hall and band club that still remembers the 1948 refugee ships that steamed past our…
# Siġġiewi’s Corner-Shop Post Office Shuts Its Shutter for Good The smell of freshly-baked ftira that used to drift across Siġġiewi’s main square at 7 a.m. still lingers, but the little green-and-yellow sub-post office that shared the doorway with the village bakery is now permanently dark. Last Friday, owner Francine Farrugia taped a handwritten note…
Move Malta’s Airport? Geologists Float an Offshore Island Plan That Could Redraw the Map Valletta – For a nation whose airport runway ends metres from the sea, the idea of shifting the whole operation to a man-made island sounds like science-fiction. Yet a panel of local and Italian geologists told Parliament’s Environment Committee yesterday that…
A 34-year-old Maltese woman has been jailed for 20 months after admitting to stealing €4,000 in cash and a pair of limited-edition designer trainers from a Sliema townhouse – a crime that has reignited debate on the island about materialism, drug-driven theft and the widening gap between those who flaunt luxury and those who crave…
Finnish phone ban brings focus, and chatter, back to school – could Malta ever hang up? Valletta’s grand-parents still talk about the day the first Nokia brick landed in their children’s blazer pockets: suddenly, break-time hopscotch was replaced by snake hunts on grey screens. Fast-forward to 2024 and Finland – the very birthplace of that…
How to survive the dreaded ‘back-to-school apocalypse’ – the Maltese way By Hot Malta staff It starts with a distant rumble of suitcases being dragged across uneven limestone pavements. Then comes the scent of freshly-printed Sliema Mon Amour notebooks mingling with August’s last batch of ħobż biż-żejt. Before you know it, the islands’ traffic arteries…
**Maltese Premier League wants GO and Melita to pay up for online streaming** In a move that could reshape how thousands of Maltese football fans watch their beloved local game, the Maltese Premier League has demanded that telecom giants GO and Melita start paying for the right to stream matches online. The league’s governing body…
