Fireworks in Buenos Aires, Flashbacks in Floriana: How Milei’s Rally Chaos Echoes in Malta’s Political Soul By Maria Vella – Hot Malta Correspondent BUENOS AIRES—When Argentina’s libertarian firebrand Javier Milei closed his final campaign rally on Thursday night with a shower of gold-and-blue confetti, few expected the night to end in tear-gas and scuffles that…
Flags at half-mast in Valletta, black ribbons pinned to café awnings in Sliema, and a minute’s silence before last night’s football derby: Malta joined Portugal yesterday in a gesture of trans-Mediterranean solidarity after the horrific Alfa Pendular derailment near Lisbon that killed seven and injured more than fifty. For many Maltese, the tragedy feels closer…
Malta Consul Races to Casablanca: Lifeline Thrown to Maltese Prisoner in Dire Straits When the phone rang at 3:27 a.m. last Tuesday in the consular section of Malta’s Rabat headquarters, duty officer Maria Zammit recognised the Moroccan country code instantly. On the line was a frantic Maltese woman whose brother, 42-year-old welder and father-of-three Luke…
France Slaps Google & Shein with Mega-Fines: What Malta’s Cookie Pop-up Chaos Could Mean for Us By now every Maltese smartphone addict has done the dance: you open a new site, a Technicolor banner erupts—“We value your privacy!”—and before you can tap “Accept All,” your thumb has already sold your digital soul. Yesterday, France decided…
Valletta cinephiles woke this week to news that the world’s oldest film festival, Venice, had just premiered a work that hits closer to home than any Mediterranean war drama in recent memory. “No Other Land”, an unprecedented co-production by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, opened the Orizzonti Extra sidebar to a ten-minute standing ovation—then left Maltese…
Google Dodges Chrome Break-Up: What a US Judge’s Ruling Means for Malta’s €1.5 Billion Digital Bet By Luke Caruana | Hot Malta Valletta’s cafés were buzzing yesterday with more than just talk of festa fireworks and summer rents. Entrepreneurs, lawyers and start-up founders huddled over cortados, dissecting a decision handed down 8,000 kilometres away in…
Comedy on Trial: How a British Joke Arrest Echoes Malta’s Own Battle for Satire By Hot Malta Newsroom A British comedy writer’s arrest for sharing a meme about the UK’s new Royal Navy recruits has ricocheted across Valletta’s café terraces and Gozitan village squares, igniting uneasy memories of Malta’s own brushes with censorship. Graham Linehan—the…
Pete Buttigieg: ‘I remember buying The Times and a ħobża for dad’ – a Maltese son’s journey to the White House By Martina Vella | Hot Malta VALLETTA – When United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told a Washington audience last week that “I remember buying The Times and a ħobża for dad,” Maltese…
Putin Meets Kim: From Valletta Balconies to Vladivostok – What the Russia-North Korea Pact Means for Malta By a Hot Malta correspondent | Valletta On a balmy Mediterranean evening, while elderly men argued over ċisk and ħobż biż-żejt in Strait Street and tourists queued for gelato beneath the honey-coloured bastions, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un…
China’s Searing Summer Sends Ripples to Malta’s Shores by Maria Vella, Hot Malta correspondent Valletta – While the Grand Harbour’s limestone walls glow calmly under a 31 °C September breeze, meteorologists in Beijing have just confirmed what many suspected: China has endured its hottest summer since records began in 1951. Average temperatures from June to…
Valletta quietens at dusk, the honey-coloured bastions glowing above Grand Harbour while pushchairs and prayer-beads swing side-by-side on the Barakka lift. Yet even here, 1,800 kilometres from Gaza City, Israel’s military build-up feels close enough to touch. Over the past week, the Maltese have followed each new brigade, each tank column, with a particular intimacy…
Kathryn Bigelow Returns to Venice with Political Thriller – Why Malta Should Watch Closely By Hot Malta Staff Writer VENICE – As the 81st Venice Film Festival unfurls its red carpet this week, American director Kathryn Bigelow storms back into the Lido with “Requiem for the Fallen,” a pulse-quickening political thriller set against a fictional…
