News of the Magħtab fire broke around 6.30am this morning. The plume of smoke now, three hours later, appears to be abating with reports it is now considerably less black than when it started. Minister Michael Farrugia tweeted the fire should be under control this morning. In the meantime, the central part of the island [...]
The burning of the Magħtab landfill is a man-made disaster. The Civil Protection Department is warning people in the wake of its plume to stay indoors and close their windows to avoid sucking toxic fumes in. And pray for wind to blow this over the sea. The Labour Party in those heady days leading to [...]
An insider I know sent in this guest post to help us understand the rules that might guide a bishop on what to do when they come across a case of clerical sex abuse. I’m told to point out that wherever the term ‘bishop’ is used it also applies to ‘major superiors’ who have similar [...]
I haven’t seen the original interview on Smash TV; just this summary of it on The Malta Independent. But I can’t fault anything in what Alfred Sant is being quoted as saying. He focused his attention on the Parliamentary Opposition because that is what he was talking about. He may or may not agree with [...]
The Church needed to manage the reaction to my blog post of two days ago reporting that a priest convicted of molesting 17 children and banned for life by a civil court from ever dealing with children was now working as a priest in Bormla. I reported what they had told me when I published [...]
The following is a statement by the Communications Office of the Archdiocese of Malta issued earlier this afternoon. I will comment on this in a separate post: The Communications Office refers to articles published in the media over the last 48 hours about Fr Felix Cini, a priest of Maltese nationality incardinated in the Diocese [...]
Photo: Jame Bartlett The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom has asked the prime minister Joseph Muscat whether an open public inquiry will be held into the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia and particularly on whether the assassination could have been prevented. ECPMF's legal advisor Flutura Kusari has told a gathering [...]
Labour governments did not invent this. This one sure didn’t anyway. PN governments also wrote little cheques to many people in the form of some rebate or other. Doesn’t really matter who is doing it: the practice is populist, wasteful and utterly pointless. The Finance Minister announced today the government is living up to a [...]
US Prosecutors have been ordered to briefly pause from sifting through tens of thousands of emails from accounts belonging to Ali Sadr Hasheminejad. The pause, expected to last three weeks, is required so that emails to and from Ali Sadr’s wives and lawyers are properly filtered out. The order by Judge Andrew Carter of the [...]
Shaher Awartani, originally from Jordan, but the holder of a Malta passport purchased through Henley & Partners has been named in the 1MDB scandal, the biggest financial scandal in Malaysian history that is seeing that former prime minister of that country charged with corruption. Malaysian police have last Friday filed criminal charges against fugitive financier [...]
I live in Mqabba. I'm not native of the town, but I love it here. We get a lot of fireworks, and once or twice a year I go see the grand shows they put on. I like fireworks. I like food too, but the doctor says I have too much and must cut down. [...]
There's a lot of chuckling around the water cooler today about a study being reported on in the press of research that shows that poor air quality 'makes you stupid'. The new study suggests that poor air quality can shave off a year's worth of schooling from your intelligence which if you haven't had many [...]
The author of this guest post was known to me for some time, well before he told me he had been molested as a child by a priest. He got in touch to tell me his story after I wrote about Gozo diocese priest Joseph Bezzina on whom Catholic blogger Mark Lambert wrote this blog [...]
Felix Cini, convicted in 2004 in Italy for molesting 17 children and caught downloading child-porn on his computers by the police, has been permitted by the Maltese Curia to say mass at Bormla parish “on special occasions”. These photos are from the mass and procession of this year’s Pentecost where Felix Cini and other priests [...]
Times of Malta’s Denise Grech made the incoming chief of the Housing Authority sweat. Good job. Someone should be telling Mr Leonid McKay he’s in for what should be one of the toughest jobs in the public administration right now: if he was selected to do it properly. His performance at the interview suggests he [...]
The Times of Malta leader today calls out Michelle Muscat and Nickie Vella de Fremaux for their comparable behaviour. It calls them WAGs, comparing them to air-headed spouses of professional footballers merely famous by association. And it calls them out for using their fame to blame everyone but themselves for shortfalls they could have helped. [...]
Pandora sent in this comment under my commentary of yesterday on the Gozo priestly sex abuse story. “It was not my intention to comment on this case, but I am in Xagħra today and I have come to the conclusion that really one has to know both sides of the story before painting one completely [...]
John McCain was an enthusiastic supporter of the improvement of Malta’s relations with the United States. He was here in Malta in 2008, days after he lost the presidential election to Barrack Obama. He famously immersed himself in his duties as Senator. He would later say of those weeks immediately after losing the election that [...]
Sent in by an anonymous author. Living in a democracy is very important, it is a basic human right, maybe one we often take for granted. Our country is meant to be a democracy too, but is it? To someone who understands what a democracy truly is, the mere notion of assassinating a journalist is [...]
