Now you see it, now you don’t – the phrase that once belonged to circus magicians has become the unofficial soundtrack to Maltese life in 2024. One week a 17th-century townhouse in Sliema stands proud, its green wooden balcony catching the last rays of a Mediterranean sunset; the next, it’s a cloud of dust and…
**Ombudsman Slams “Illegal” Suq tal-Belt Canopies, Orders Immediate Removal** Valletta’s iconic open-air market has found itself at the centre of a fresh storm after the Ombudsman ruled that the jutting canvas canopies shading Suq tal-Belt stalls are illegal structures that must come down. In a blunt report delivered to Parliament on Tuesday, Ombudsman Anthony C….
# Fake Mr Beast Chat Costs Malta-Based Millionaire €1.25 Million in 24-Hour Scam Blitz Sliema, Malta – When 42-year-old iGaming tycoon “Christian” (name changed on legal advice) opened Instagram while waiting for his espresso at a busy St Julian’s café last Tuesday, the last thing he expected was to lose €1.25 million before the coffee…
Letters to the editor – September 25, 2025 By Hot Malta Staff The Wednesday edition of Times of Malta lands on doorsteps still warm from the bakery van, and by 07:30 the Opinion pages are already being torn out and passed around in ħwienet, parish rectories, and university corridors. Today’s “Letters to the Editor” slot—exactly…
Valletta’s Republic Street was already humming with early-morning shoppers when the bronze bells of St John’s Co-Cathedral tolled nine times and the first of three government press conferences kicked off on 25 September 2025. By the time the last microphone clicked off at 6 p.m., the island had been handed a reshuffle of policies that…
Watch: Flooding in several localities as heavy rain hits Gozo ================================================————- Victoria’s stone-paved It-Tokk woke up looking more like Venice this morning after an overnight cloudburst dumped a month’s worth of rain onto Gozo in less than six hours. Videos shot by residents show water gushing down Republic Street, swirling round the bronze statue of…
Victoria’s narrow alleys became rushing rivers, farm-to-table fields turned into mirror-flat lakes, and the centuries-old stone balconies of the Citadel dripped like wet sponges as a violent cloudburst parked itself over Gozo on Tuesday afternoon. Within 90 minutes the island received 42 mm of rain—roughly half its monthly October average—sending tourists scurrying into baroque doorways,…
Valletta’s 17th-century alleys may have been built for knights, but last June they were claimed by film crews, pop-up lighting rigs, and a tide of international celebrities here for the inaugural Mediterrane Film Festival. Now we know exactly what that star-studded invasion cost the public purse: €92,478 paid to three local event-management agencies for “logistics,…
**Red Arrows Roar in for the Malta Airshow: A Sky-High Spectacle Uniting Island and Empire** The unmistakable roar of Rolls-Royce engines shattered Malta’s morning calm as the RAF Red Arrows pierced through Mediterranean blue, tracing perfect red, white and blue smoke across our island skies. For three glorious days this October, the Malta International Airshow…
**No More Cash in Hand: Malta’s New Rules for Third-Country Workers Shake Up the Labour Market** From 1 October, the rustle of brown envelopes on building sites, in restaurant kitchens and on cleaning rotas will fall silent. A new government directive bars employers from paying third-country nationals (TCNs) in cash, forcing wages through bank transfers…
A 34-year-old mother of two from Żabbar found herself back inside the Corradino Correctional Facility last night after allegedly inviting her ex-partner—whom she is accused of harassing—to her birthday dinner, barely three weeks after magistrates granted her bail. Police sources told Hot Malta that the woman, whose name is subject to a court-issued media ban,…
**‘She was left to drown’: Maltese NGOs demand court trauma training after magistrate berates domestic-violence survivor** A coalition of Maltese women’s shelters, lawyers and psychologists is demanding mandatory trauma-informed training for every magistrate, police officer and court official after a Gozo magistrate last week scolded a domestic-violence victim for “crying too much” and “wasting the…
