UPDATED at 08:44. See below for details of the 'rescue' operation. A wooden boat carrying 90 migrants is presently within Maltese territorial waters. Reports from the location say the boat is in a precarious state with a real risk of toppling over. The passengers include at least one pregnant woman and some children. Alarm Phone [...]

Prime Minister Robert Abela spoke fully expecting anyone to be surprised by insisting Malta is only obliged to coordinate a rescue in its waters, not necessarily to use state-owned assets to do so. Of course, that’s true. Anything that is available and nearest at hand should be turned around to save lives at sea. But [...]

There’s talk of Covid-19 accelerating trends and making them the new normal. Pre-Covid we already had ministers shifting their engagement with the public away from meetings with the press favouring instead unmediated propaganda on social media. Konrad Mizzi made it his blatant policy of only inviting to his press events “journalists” on the government’s payroll. [...]

Charles Caruana Carabez is the ombudsman responsible to rule on issues arising out of educational institutions, including the university. He is paid to be the defender of citizens against faceless and unfeeling bureaucracy, of rules that aren’t thought through, of undesired consequences of policy. He rights wrongs. He is a caped hero for our times. [...]

However problematic this penning on the high seas is bound to prove, it is an alternative to Option One the government went for over the Easter weekend. Presumably inspired by Christ’s sacrifice, Option One was ‘let them drown’. The government blamed the crossing on the migrants who should have changed their travel plans like everyone [...]

Last night a Captain Morgan tourist boat was equipped with mattresses that can be carried by one person four at a time and sent out to meet the now notorious Mae Yemenja, the Maltese-owned Libyan-flagged fishing trawler that was the scene of the crime for an illegal push-back to Libya of some 50 migrants and [...]

Neville Gafà is about as smart as he looks. And as honest. I very much doubt that his sudden attack of acute sincerity was the result of some damascene illumination. His decision to out the prime minister and charge him with ordering an illegal push-back of migrants to Libya (read Newsbook’s report from last night, [...]

The Maltese-owned but Libyan-flagged Mae Yemenja left Malta’s Grand Harbour yesterday evening around the same time that a Maltese plane flew over the estimated location of a dinghy with around 60 migrants aboard in the Malta search and rescue area. NGO Alarm Phone this morning raised the alert about the boat saying the AFM control [...]

I thought I should perhaps write something about Mario Philip Azzopardi. He’s the guy with the Herr Doktor Mengele eyes who trawls the net for women to insult with sexually offensive terms and to inflict verbal violence that would cause a melee in the mud to pause in gaunt embarrassment. It would be legitimate for [...]

We've been here before. We get information about meetings held by the Maltese government from sources in the country our government is having meetings in. Usually that's when the government does not even want us to know what the meeting is about. Evarist Bartolo appears to have had meetings with the Libyan equivalent of a [...]

“The facts and the evidence that has emerged so far points to grave legal responsibility of the Maltese authorities. For at least 5 days they refused to assist 63 people at sea. They coordinated their illegal push-back out of Malta’s search and rescue area of responsibility. They caused the death of 5 people who needed [...]

Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire has identified the names of 12 people who died on a boat allowed to drift in Malta’s search and rescue area in spite of the fact that the Maltese armed forces spotted them when they were still alive. Omar, Mogos, Hzqiel, Hdru, Huruy, Teklay, Nohom, Kidus, Debesay, and three men named [...]

Rather pathetic, isn’t it? Jean Philippe Chetcuti was caught by a hidden camera promising a journalist pretending to be a client that he can get his buddies in the government to bend the rules to allow a person with a criminal record to buy a Maltese passport. He has now been certified as a champion [...]

Nothing has been heard since before 4.30 this morning from 62 migrants who made a distress call to NGO Alarm Phone as their vessel started taking in water. Alarm Phone says the boat has been likely spotted yesterday afternoon by a Frontex surveillance flight. The agency says they're trying to get through to Malta's armed [...]

Timeline of Events On 21 March 2018 the MFSA issued directives: removing Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad from the position of director of the Bank and any executive roles that he holds within the bank;o ordering that Ali Sadr suspends the exercise of his voting rights as shareholder of the Bank and refrains from exercising the [...]

This podcast by Francesco Serra is part of the Italian series "Ascuta" put together by a branch of anti-mafia umbrella organisation Use this link to listen on Spotify.

There is no doubt the odds are stacked in favour of Robert Abela. In spite of a Venice Commission intervention demanding reform, he will be choosing the next police chief and will keep them for a year on probation with the power to kick them out without needing to give anyone an explanation. It feels [...]

The prime minister said yesterday Repubblika “paralysed the army” by playing politics. It rather takes away all the comfort we get from the idea that we have an army that can defend us from terrorists, traffickers and organised criminals. If a bunch of ragtag Nazzjonalisti ndannati ta’ Simon Busuttil can disarm our military by hiring [...]

Arend Lijphart in a variety of contributions discusses the notion of a "consociational” or “consensus” democracy relating to or denoting a political system formed by the cooperation of different social groups on the basis of shared power. In his seminal 1999 treatise “Patterns of Democracy” he establishes a distinction between what he calls alternately “majoritarian” [...]

Continues from part 1 of this series. The 12-month report of the competent person was tabled in Parliament on 20 April, and it covers the period from 20 October 2018, the date of appointment of the competent person, to 31 October 2019. The competent person, however, included certain important data up to 28 February 2020, [...]