**All Aboard for Winter: Malta’s Buses Shift Gear as Students Head Back to Class** Valletta’s skyline was still blushing with the last bruise of dawn when the first winter-schedule bus—an emerald-and-cream King Long—rumbled out of the new Floriana terminus at 05:20 this Monday. Inside, driver Raymond Pace adjusted his mirror to watch a crocodile of…
**Four Tuna Farms Fined ‘Insignificant’ €14,000 for Fish Slime: A Drop in the Ocean?** The Mediterranean sun beats down on Malta’s pristine waters, where traditional fishing boats bob alongside modern tuna pens. Yet beneath the azure surface lies a controversy that has local fishermen shaking their heads in disbelief. Four tuna farms have been slapped…
**Four Tuna Farms Fined €14,000 for Fish Slime: A Slippery Slope for Malta’s Blue Economy** The Mediterranean dawn was just breaking over Marsaxlokk Bay when fisherman Carmelo Grech noticed something odd shimmering on the water’s surface. “It looked like someone had poured olive oil across the bay,” the 67-year-old recalls. “But this wasn’t oil –…
**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…
**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…
RAW: Artist Veronica Lee on the beauty of imperfection In a sun-drenched studio overlooking Valletta’s Grand Harbour, Veronica Lee dips a cracked ceramic bowl into a basin of seawater she collected at dawn from Sliema’s shoreline. The bowl, once destined for a Żabbar charity-shop shelf, will become part of her new series “Kisses of the…
Feast-day fireworks still hung in the humid Valletta air when Prime Minister Robert Abela stepped onto the Palace balcony at 09:00 sharp on 18 September 2025 to deliver a surprise televised address. Shopkeepers on Republic Street turned up their radios; bus drivers idled at City Gate to listen; café regulars at Café Cordina paused mid-pastizzi….
# Mediterranean on the Frontline: How 16,500 European Heat Deaths Sound Alarm for Malta The Mediterranean’s record-breaking summer claimed 16,500 lives across Europe, with new research revealing the deadly human cost of climate change that hits dangerously close to Malta’s shores. Published Monday in Nature Medicine, the Barcelona Institute for Global Health study examined mortality…
A patch of scrubland opposite Gozo’s most beloved pilgrimage site is being transformed into a fragrant, climate-resilient garden, signalling a quiet revolution in how the sister island protects its sacred landscapes. The Ta’ Pinu greening project—launched last month by the Ministry for Gozo, the local council of Għarb and nature NGO Żibel—will see 3,000 indigenous…
Robert Redford: A tribute to Hollywood’s golden boy with a Midas touch By Hot Malta Staff Valletta’s open-air cinema season kicked off last Friday with a 35-mm print of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” projected against the bastion walls of St. Elmo. As the final frame dissolved into the Mediterranean night, the crowd—Maltese cinephiles,…
**Watch: Lands minister backs CEO amid Fortina land valuation controversy** Lands Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi has thrown his weight behind the Lands Authority CEO Robert Vella, insisting Vella “enjoys my full confidence” despite a mushrooming public outcry over the €1.9 million valuation placed on a prime 3,000-square-metre tract of seabed opposite the Fortina Hotel in…
**Hedymeles: A Fairytale for Adults That’s Enchanting Malta’s Creative Scene** In a country where Baroque facades meet TikTok trends, a new hybrid creature has landed: *Hedymeles*, a limited-edition art-and-text volume that reads like a Brothers Grimm tale after three shots of local honey liquor. The project—half illuminated manuscript, half graphic novel—was quietly launched last month…
