George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat have been indicted for voluntary homicide in the case of Daphne Caruana Galizia that was assassinated by a car bomb 21 months ago today, at 3 pm of Monday 16 October 2017. The three men are also charged with causing an explosion that brought about the death of [...]
Look, swimming 4 kilometres in the open sea is an admirable performance. Doing it for charity is a good reason to do it. To be fair I can’t think of another reason to do it unless you can swim the distance competitively. I couldn’t swim that distance to save my life. If I was being [...]
Twenty-one months after her assassination brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio and Vince Muscat have been indicted for murder. The bill of indictment was filed this morning by the Attorney General's office. The three were charged in December 2017 and evidence against them has been heard in a compilation of evidence that included testimony from international [...]
Yesterday I wrote about Frank Portelli’s fantasies about Daphne Caruana Galizia. Twenty-one months after she was killed in a car bomb he says he found out she accepted payments to influence what she wrote. Needless to say without any hint of how he could have come upon this idea. I don’t mean he does not [...]
In the 1980s Pablo Escobar sponsored Medellin football club Atletico Nacional. He was a football fan, loved his club and in any case had more money to spend than he knew what to do with it. And now, for something completely different. Cospicua side St George's Football Club were second division champions last season. Newly [...]
This morning's judgement is a clear pronouncement that Owen Bonnici's "reforms" on judicial appointments are worthless The government, fronted mainly by Owen Bonnici, has repeatedly claimed Labour has enhanced judicial independence by amending the Constitution in 2016 and appointing a “Judicial Appointments Committee”. The official story is that since the Judicial Appointments Committee is presided [...]
On his Facebook page, Frank Portelli is on one of his mad rants. His latest obsession is the idea that he “knows” Daphne Caruana Galizia got paid — he says something about a million euro though it is not entirely clear who paid the million to whom — to write about someone. Or something. Or [...]
When one organises an event they ought not to expect the rest of the country to clear their decks. At around 7.30pm of the 16th of every month since October 2017, civil society organisations and groups have gathered in Republic Street, Valletta to renew their protest after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The 16th [...]
An online petition calling for an independent inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia has so far raised just shy of 34,000 signatures. The petition, on change.org, was started by veteran Italian journalist Sandro Ruotolo and anti-mafia journalist Paolo Borrometi. Both journalists live under armed guard because of threats on their life by organised [...]
You first read it here, but it is now official. Kurt Farrugia, affectionately known as the coconut, is moving to Malta Enterprise as its CEO. Given that this is the second time this has happened, we can suspect a pattern emerging of the promotion of Malta's foreign direct investment becoming a retirement home for prime [...]
Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi has today refused Repubblika’s request for him to recuse himself from hearing the appeal in the case filed by the civil rights NGO on judicial appointments. The request was made in a setting last Monday when lawyers for Repubblika Jason Azzopardi and Simon Busuttil argued that the Chief Justice was conflicted [...]
It’s a perverse criticism I grant you. But Carmelo Abela cannot cover up for someone else’s lies to save his own life. He’s been here before. When he was home affairs minister he burst the bubble of all the nudging and the winking about whether Joseph Muscat and Matteo Renzi had some under the counter [...]
It took 20 months of campaigning, a successful court case filed by the family on another aspect of the same provision of the European Convention on Human Rights, a resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a year-long worldwide campaign of all major free speech NGOs, a petition signed by some of [...]
It is impossible to take anything Adrian Delia does or says at face value and extremely difficult to engage with him on policy matters. It’s like opening your front door to a pair of American boys in their twenties wearing crisp which short-sleeved shirts, a tie and a big black badge on their left shirt [...]
In their letter to the Chairman of the PN’s Executive Committee, petitioners demanding a confidence vote in Adrian Delia complained they were told yesterday that the list of the members of the General Council eligible to vote on the motion at the next Council was not frozen on the day the motion was filed — [...]
Promoters of a confidence motion in Adrian Delia have openly complained PN Secretary General Clyde Puli is betraying instructions of the Executive Committee on the terms of a general council called for 27 July. The Council was convened after more than 150 petitioners asked for a General Council meeting to be held. The party administration [...]
Watch Herman Grech’s interview with Louis Galea this morning on timesofmalta.com. There are many things you can take from that conversation. I’ll focus on one. Louis Galea confronts the last word in defence of Adrian Delia’s rule against all basic common sense and crushes it: it does not matter that he was “elett mit-tesserati”. As [...]
Just over two months away from a deadline given by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for Malta's government to open an independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, anti-mafia campaigner Don Luigi Ciotti signed a petition calling for Malta's government to comply. The government has so far [...]
You’ll find ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine scientists that will tell you global warming is catastrophic and man made. Somewhere there will be one who for the right coverage and compensation will say that it isn’t. Put one representative of the 99,999 on a TV stage and face him with the one scientists who [...]
