Gozo Aquatic Complex opening sparks row over costs and delays By Hot Malta staff | 09 June 2025, 07:30 Xewkija’s new Gozo Aquatic Complex finally threw open its sliding glass doors last Saturday, but the ribbon-cutting was drowned out by whistles, jeers and a lone kazoo from a cluster of Gozitan pensioners who had come…
Valletta’s 16th-century Casa Rocca Piccola has hosted nobility, NATO generals and, last week, a different kind of power-broker: 40 university deans who flew in to witness the official launch of the Mediterranean Academy of Tourism (MAT). The new research-and-training hub, which quietly relocated its headquarters from Barcelona to Malta in January, is already enrolling its…
**Boom Times: 2.2 Million Visitors Choose Malta, Injecting €2 Billion into Island Life** Valletta’s cruise-liner horns haven’t stopped blushing. From January to July, 2.2 million travellers stepped onto Maltese tarmac, gangways and ferry decks—enough to fill the Granaries in Floriana five times over—and left behind €2.02 billion in their sun-baked wake. The figures, released yesterday…
**Man jailed for working illegally as cab driver for six months** A 34-year-old Egyptian national has been sentenced to six months imprisonment after being convicted of operating as an unlicensed taxi driver in Malta for over half a year, highlighting ongoing concerns about the underground transport economy that has flourished in the shadows of the…
A 34-year-old Ghanaian national has been handed a six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to operating as an unlicensed taxi driver in Malta for over half a year – a case that has reignited debate over the island’s booming but increasingly crowded ride-hailing scene. Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit heard how Joseph Mensah* cruised Sliema, St…
**Bad Bunny Boycotts US Tour Over Immigration Fears – What Malta’s Latin Community Thinks** Reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny’s shock decision to skip the United States on his upcoming “Mundo Extraño” world tour has ricocheted through Malta’s tight-knit Latin American diaspora, with many islanders praising the Puerto Rican artist for choosing principle over profit. The 30-year-old…
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…
**Watch: Investigators plead for public’s help in Charlie Kirk killing** The grainy CCTV footage flickers across Maltese screens like a scene from Netflix, but this is no crime drama. Charlie Kirk – the 23-year-old British tourist whose smile lit up TikTok feeds from Paceville to Pembroke – is dead, and Malta’s summer of carefree parties…
On the road not taken: How Malta’s forgotten routes are shaping our future The morning mist still clings to the limestone walls of Siġġiewi when 73-year-old Ċikku Camilleri swings open the iron gate that has guarded his family’s fields since 1897. Instead of turning left onto the freshly-laid tarmac that would whisk him to Rabat…
Valletta’s evening television bulletins flickered with an image that looked alien yet chillingly familiar: a grainy FBI flyer bearing the face of a “person of interest” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk. Within minutes, Maltese social media timelines were awash with side-by-side comparisons to video-game villains, memes of “The…
Valletta’s courthouse felt more like a packed bus terminus yesterday morning when 15 homeless men and women—some clutching plastic bags of belongings, others barefoot—were herded before Magistrate Joseph Mifsud in a single, chaotic sitting that lasted just 42 minutes. All faced the same charge: “voluntary homelessness” under a dusty 2017 city-bylaw that criminalises sleeping rough…
**Echoes Across the Med: How Jerusalem’s 800-Year-Old Organ Strikes a Chord in Malta** Valletta’s church bells had barely finished their Sunday cascade when the video landed in Maltese WhatsApp groups: a cedar-wood organ, silent since the Crusades, exhaling a chord that seemed to rise straight from the stone of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre….
