Valletta’s cafés were buzzing this morning with talk of a scandal that feels oceans away yet curiously close to home: the U.S. House Oversight Committee’s late-night release of a 1993 birthday note that Donald Trump allegedly scribbled to financier-turned-convicted-sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Happy birthday, Jeff,” the single sentence reads, scrawled across Trump Tower letterhead and accompanied…
**Watch: Fireworks start blaze that destroys buses but enthusiasts blame owner** A spectacular fireworks display turned into a nightmare on Sunday evening when stray pyrotechnics ignited a fire that destroyed three vintage buses parked near the Qormi feast celebrations, sending shockwaves through Malta’s tight-knit community of festa enthusiasts and vintage vehicle collectors. The incident, captured…
Borg, Delia hold first meeting after PN election: a coffee, a handshake, and the ghost of 2017 Valletta’s Café Cordina was still perfumed with pastizzi steam yesterday morning when Bernard Grech’s two erstwhile rivals met for the first time since Saturday’s bruising Nationalist Party leadership contest. Adrian Delia, the ousted leader who refuses to leave…
Midnight at Merkanti, and the queue outside Agenda bookshop snakes past the gelato stand and down the cobbled lane. It’s not a new iPhone dropping—it’s Dan Brown’s *Wild Symphony*, the thriller maestro’s first adult novel since 2017, and Valletta is treating it like a festa firework. By 00:01 the first 200 copies are gone, snapped…
Debate flares over restoration works in Mosta’s Speranza Valley ————————————————————- By [Author Name] | Hot Malta Correspondent MOSTA – A dawn mist still clung to the terraced fields when the first pneumatic drill bit into the limestone. Within minutes, a Facebook live-stream pinged across village group chats: “They’re destroying the valley!” By sunset, the quarrel…
School camp organisers lumped with bill five times higher than agreed price Żebbuġ primary school’s annual “Kamp tan-Natura” was supposed to end with toasted marshmallows and teary farewells last Friday. Instead, 47 eight-year-olds watched their teachers argue with Gozo campsite managers while a credit-card machine beeped “declined” in the background. The bill had ballooned from…
**Tragedy Across the Atlantic: Malta’s Mexican Community Mourns as Train-Bus Crash Claims 10 Lives** The Mediterranean morning was just beginning to warm when WhatsApp messages started pinging across Malta’s tight-knit Mexican community. By 7am, the group chat that usually buzzed with plans for Sunday salsa nights at Havana Club and where to find proper corn…
Bank of Valletta’s new correspondent tie-up with America’s oldest bank is being hailed in Malta as more than a routine boardroom handshake: it is a vote of confidence in the island’s post-grey-list financial system and, indirectly, in every family-run export firm, iGaming start-up and pensioner who wires university fees to a child in London. The…
Valletta’s newest cultural gem isn’t another baroque palace or a Knights-period armoury. It’s a 19th-century coal-fired power station reborn as MUŻA Industrija, the first national museum dedicated solely to Malta’s industrial heritage. When the doors swung open last Friday, former dockworkers arrived in Sunday-best jackets, teenagers posed against 10-ton cranes for TikTok clips, and tourists…
Shock and ash spiralled over Naxxar yesterday afternoon as three Arriva-era buses were turned to blackened shells in a ferocious blaze that erupted inside the old Magnolia Depot behind the parish church. By the time the last hose was rolled up at 6.42 p.m., little remained except smouldering frames, the acrid smell of burnt rubber…
**Cab driver who crashed into hair salon while drunk avoids prison time** A 42-year-old taxi driver who smashed his cab into a Sliema hair salon while more than twice the legal alcohol limit has walked free from court with a suspended sentence, reigniting debate about how Malta treats drunk-driving offences. Magistrate Rachel Montebello sentenced the…
**Young Voices, Big Dreams: Gozo’s Next Generation Takes the Mic** *A new public-speaking course on Malta’s sister island is turning shy schoolchildren into confident storytellers—and giving Gozo’s dialect a proud new stage.* XAGĦRA, GOZO—On a breezy Thursday afternoon, the usually quiet parish hall in Xagħra echoes with applause. A 10-year-old wearing her brother’s oversized blazer…
