A man died and a second workman was injured in an accident at Ta’ Qali on Wednesday afternoon, the police said.The man, 40 from Gharghur, died on site, the Ta' Qali national park.He has been named as Adrian Muscat, a father of four.A second wor...

Prime Minister Robert Abela defended Rosianne Cutajar, saying that Cutajar is still a Member of Parliament and has been reprimanded for her actions.The Prime Minister was asked by journalists about episodes of bad governance during his legislature, t...

Necessary steps were taken by the relevant entities to ensure price stability and low energy tariffs, the Energy Ministry told The Malta Independent in response to questions relating to energy prices.During a Public Accounts Committee meeting earlier...

Ahead of the latest inquiry hearing of the El Hiblu 3, an Amnesty International delegation is travelling to Malta to call for the charges against them to be dropped.Three young men are being charged with terrorism and hijacking a merchant vessel that...

There was a time when the General Workers’ Union held protests in the streets when it believed that the government was taking measures that would have led to changes to the conditions of work of Air Malta employees, or some dismissals.There wer...

Several dozen octogenarians, bundled against the cold, chattered in Russian and Hebrew as they picked through heaps of carrots, onions and grapefruit in a Jerusalem courtyard.Nearly all of them Holocaust survivors, they were picking up donations of f...

Most coronavirus restrictions including mandatory face masks were lifted in England on Thursday, after Britain’s government said its vaccine booster rollout successfully reduced serious illness and COVID-19 hospitalizations.From Thursday, face ...

Former minister Konrad Mizzi walked out of a Public Accounts Committee meeting to ask for a ruling from the Speaker on the way he was being treated during the committee's meeting today.He was testifying on a report compiled by the Auditor General on ...

BERLIN (AP) — Austria will end its lockdown for unvaccinated residents next Monday — one day before a COVID-19 vaccine mandate takes effect in the country, the country's chancellor announced Wednesday.Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer sai...

Prime Minister Robert Abela is continuing to keep his cards close to his chest when it comes to the date of this year’s general election.Asked by journalists outside Castille what his comments were over rumours swirling that Malta will go to th...

Opposition Leader Bernard Grech said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Robert Abela is unable to take decisions and is “led by others.”Speaking in Parliament, Grech referred to Abela’s claim that there was not a single case of bad go...

The Planning Authority has suspended a decision on a controversial plan for the construction of apartment blocks on arable land in a rural area of Nadur over concerns on who owns the land in question.The project at hand was the “proposed excava...

The Court of Appeal has overturned a judge’s decision not to uphold a claim for unpaid terminal benefits, instead awarding €14,398 to a former President’s communications coordinator whose employment had been terminated when the Presi...

A new energy billing system that will help consumers save their unused cheaper energy units for use at a later stage is being introduced this month, energy minister Miriam Dalli said Wednesday.Speaking in Parliament, Dalli said the new system will ad...

The Opposition said Wednesday that the new appointment of Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar as the president of the parliamentary health committee was an insult to the House. Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, PN MP Robert Cutajar said that despite what w...

Hamrun Spartans and Birkirkara fired blanks yesterday in a rather drab affair, with both sides earning a point, when only the three points at stake mattered. In fact both teams were the great losers yesterday as their only aim was victory to keepe in...

Two more patients have died with Covid-19 as the number of active cases dipped slightly, figures released by the health authorities show.The latest victims are two men aged 86 and 88. Their deaths take the tally to 538.There were 314 new cases record...

A drug report presented today showed that in 2020, a significant increase in cocaine users was noted and that, although drug related emergencies have decreased slightly, the number is still high.Co-Author of the report Manuel Gellel stated that the r...

Occupy Justice activist Pia Zammit, who is also an actress, won an appeal against a decision by the courts to dismiss a libel case she had filed against it-Torca over an article it published containing a photograph of her in a Nazi uniform while back...

The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association (MHRA) welcomes the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health Dr Chris Fearne that most of the measures that came in force on the 17th January will be lifted on the 7th and 14th Febr...

Captain Morgan's general manager Kevin Zammit Briffa has told a judge that the vessels used as an offshore detention centre for migrants had their registration changed from "passenger vessels" to "workboats" at around the same time that the company w...

The Prime Minister's silence makes him an accomplice in Labour Whip Glenn Bedingfield’s outburst in Parliament on Tuesday, the Nationalist Party said today.PL Whip Bedingfield lashed out at the courts and the police over the search of former Pr...

An application for a garage complex adjacent to the historic Turkish Cemetery in Marsa was refused by the Planning Commission.The project's architect Stephen Farrugia argued that after being told to scale down the plans and introduce a buffer zone to...

Minister for Animal Rights Anton Refalo told the Malta Independent on Wednesday that the 2016 laws regarding the possession of ‘dangerous animals,’ particularly big cats, must be amended to ensure the protection of these animals. This new...

The NGO Repubblika has compared a speech by PL Whip Glenn Bedingfield to other speeches which served as a precursor to dictatorships or totalitarianism.Prime Minister Robert Abela must clearly declare whether his government is in favour of democracy,...

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Animal Rights Anton Refalo announced on Wednesday a new system for the traceability of wine, a new digital transformation within the agricultural sector. A video shown during the conference displayed that...

Malta’s vaccine certificate rules will be relaxed in the first half of February for a number of establishments, Health Minister Chris Fearne announced in Parliament on Tuesday.Fearne announced that as from Monday 7 February, a valid vaccine cer...

MEP Alex Agius Saliba's nomination by the Socialists and Democrats to become Vice-Chair of the Committee on Petitions in the European Parliament was approved unanimously by all members of the Committee, the Labour Party said.For the past two and a ha...

The Malta Football Association expressed its disagreement with the Health Authorities’ decision not to include outdoor sports events among the several activities that will no longer require attendees to present a vaccination certificate for ent...

Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer has been chosen by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament to represent them within the European Parliament’s committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM). Engerer...

The seasonally adjusted monthly unemployment rate for December 2021 stood at 3.4 per cent, at par with the previous month and declining by 0.9 percentage points from December 2020, the NSO said today.In December 2021, the monthly unemployment rate wa...

The World Health Organization said there were 21 million new coronavirus cases reported globally last week, the highest weekly number of COVID-19 cases recorded since the pandemic began. The number of deaths was largely unchanged, at more than 50,000...

PL Whip Glenn Bedingfield lashed out at the courts and the police over the search of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's home, and also took aim at other institutions within the country.The Burmarrad home of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was ...

Temperatures inside school classrooms are the same as outside, the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) said. “Whilst Ministry and Directorates personnel are having AC units on heating mode running day and night at their respective offices, schools ar...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bracing for the conclusions of an investigation into allegations of lockdown-breaching parties, a document that could help him end weeks of scandal and discontent, or bring his time in office to an abrupt close.Senior ...

There’s a Maltese saying, quite vulgar, which refers to times when people do not think enough before they speak up. It mentions an anatomical part which does not see the light of day, unless one goes to a nudist beach. The English have a more p...

The European Union is seeking to streamline the sometimes chaotic travel between its member states during the pandemic by relying more clearly on a person's vaccine or infection status rather than where a traveler came from.The EU's 27 Euro...

Pope Francis is set to visit Malta on 2 and 3 April, sparking rumours that an election will have to be slated for March.Times of Malta reports that the Vatican has informed the Maltese government that the pontiff is willing to travel to Malta before ...

TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo on Tuesday reported a record high of COVID-19 cases, as Japan prepared to implement new anti-virus measures amid surging infections driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.The capital city logged 12,813 new cases, whi...

Malta has made very slight progress in this year’s Corruption Perception Index, gaining only one point over its 2020 score.The CPI is published yearly by Transparency International. Malta received a score of 54 this year, edging up only one poi...

The Nationalist Party has said that it will not participate in the parliamentary committee which Rosianne Cutajar has been appointed to lead.Cutajar was appointed as the chair of Parliament’s Health Committee, replacing fellow PL MP Silvio Grix...

In a request for a preliminary ruling by Randstad Italia SpA to the European Court of Justice, Grand Chamber, the interpretation of Article 19(1) TEU[1] relating to the obligations of Member States to provide remedies sufficient to ensure effective l...

Italian lawmakers failed to agree again Tuesday in a vote selecting Italy's next president, as a consensus on who to support continued to elude party leaders.On Tuesday, 1,008 Grand Electors, most of them members of Parliament with some regional repr...

Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo has defended Maltese travel rules, but hinted that things could change “once public health has been safeguarded.”Both the Malta International Airport and Airports Council International have criticised Malt...

Opposition Leader Bernard Grech has called MPs Adrian Delia and Therese Comodini Cachia following an online spat between the two.Comodini Cachia took aim at fellow MP Adrian Delia in a Tweet on Tuesday, over the latter's questioning of a journalist i...

Three former bouncers who used to run security at a St. Paul’s Bay club have been jailed after a court found them guilty of carrying out a savage attack on an African man in 2020, with one of them stabbing the victim in the face.Stepan Stankov,...

The weather may be a bit chilly, but it is significantly better than the weather front which battered Malta today 24 years ago.A heavy storm dropped over 100mm of rain and hail in most parts of Malta on 25 January 1998, leading to some roads being tu...

Two more Covid-19 patients have passed away while positive for the virus, while health authorities reported 323 new cases on Tuesday.Two men, aged 61 and 77 respectively, died while positive for the virus, taking Malta’s pandemic death toll up ...

President of the PN’s General Council Mark Anthony Sammut said that the Maltese people are facing a harsh reality because of the current inflation in food prices.“The government remains non-reactive, but rather continues with its campaign...

Anthony Sevasta has been appointed Director of the Asset Recovery Bureau, a government statement read.The appointment was made after consultation with the Asset Recovery Board, which unanimously approved the nomination, the statement added.Sevas...

The Labour Party has said that there is little to no doubt that Bernard Grech is not leading the PN himself, but that he is being led by the NGO Repubblika.The PL was reacting to a decision by the PN to boycott Parliament’s Health Committee in ...

Police have charged five men with having abducted a man and driving off with him in a van last Friday.The men who were arraigned are Christian Borg, 28, from Swieqi, Thorne Mangion,27, from Qormi, Tyson Grech 26, from Senglea, Burton Azzopardi, 20 fr...

Pfizer has begun a study comparing its original Covid-19 vaccine with doses specially tweaked to match the hugely contagious omicron variant.Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced the study on Tuesday.Covid-19 vaccine makers have been updating the...

The appointment of Rosianne Cutajar to head a parliamentary committee makes the House complicit in the culture of impunity, NGO Repubblika said.Rosianne Cutajar was appointed as the president of the parliamentary health committee.This comes after aro...

BirdLife Malta was set up on 25 January, 1962, at the time as the Malta Ornithological Society. The NGO turned 60 on Tuesday."This year will be a time to reflect on the past 60 years with particular appreciation to all those who dedicate time and ene...

Reports appearing in the local press ‘give the wrong impression that the Russian Federation has placed Malta on a blacklist. The information is not correct,’ the Maltese Finance Ministry told The Malta Independent.Newsbook had reported th...

The British government announced Monday that it is scrapping coronavirus travel testing requirements for the vaccinated, news hailed by the travel industry as a big step back to normality.Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “to show that thi...

Covid-19 has impacted mobility in the country and as a result, the number of passengers using public transport are low when compared to pre-pandemic levels.Passenger numbers in 2021 amounted to 35.2 million, which is an increase on the 33.9 million p...

JERUSALEM (AP) — An expert panel on Tuesday advised the Israeli government to begin offering a fourth vaccine dose to everyone over the age of 18, citing research showing it helps prevent COVID-19 infection and severe illness.The advisory commi...

World health officials are offering hope that the ebbing of the omicron wave could give way to a new, more manageable phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as they warn of difficult weeks ahead and the possibility of another, more dangerous variant ar...

Eight people have now died after a stampede outside a game at the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament in Cameroon, while another seven people are in serious condition in the hospital, authorities said Tuesday.The death toll increased after two m...

In 2021, 32% of people aged 16 to 74 in Malta reported undertaking an online course or using online learning material in the three months prior to a survey on this, which is higher than the EU average, Eurostat statistics show.In 2019, the percentage...

A first round of voting in Italy's Parliament for the country's next president yielded an avalanche of blank ballots Monday, as lawmakers and special regional electors failed to deliver a winner amid a political stalemate.With special pandemic precau...

The final amount in Covid aid that Air Malta will be getting will be “hammered out” in meetings between the airline and the European Commission that will take place in the coming days, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said on Monday.Last we...

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana was unable to give an exact timeline on Malta’s quest to getting off the FATF greylist, but did say that the government has submitted a report to assessors for consideration.Caruana was asked whether, given that a...

The Nationalist Party's anti-corruption bills were tabled in Parliament for a first reading on Monday.Last week the government refused to table the anti-corruption bills arguing that the 12 bills "contain aspects of a money bill', thus had to be pres...

Two more Covid-19 patients have died, while 202 new cases of the virus have been reported by health authorities.A 55-year-old man and a 90-year-old man died in the last 24 hours while positive for Covid-19, taking Malta’s pandemic death toll up...

Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar has been appointed as the president of the parliamentary health committee.This comes after around two months the Standards Committee voted to admonish Cutajar after adopting a report that found her in breach of ethics.The P...

Court proceedings relating to the European arrest warrant issued against former Pilatus Bank employee Maria Efimova have been adjourned sine die by the magistrate hearing the case.In a decision handed down today, the court, presided by Magistrat...

Graziella Galea has been officially co-opted to Parliament after she was approved by the Nationalist Party to replace the seat vacated by David Thake.Her nomination was approved unanimously by the PN's Executive Committee and she was sworn in on Mond...

Almost 2,000 people responded to the PN's call to submit their electricity bills for verification, the party told The Malta Independent.In May 2021, the Nationalist Party had called on the public to register their utility bills with them as the ...

Speaker Anglu Farrugia ruled on Monday that government MPs are free to move a motion before the ethics committee to suspend the debate on a standards report on Justyne Caruana.Last week, the government MPs on the committee said they wanted to postpon...

Six people, three of whom are minors, were released from a 58-day period of illegal detention at the Safi Barracks last Friday, although a request for the release of another detained teenager was denied, NGO aditus Foundation said on Monday.The first...

The Malta Union of Teachers will be conducting strikes after a failure from the University of Malta and the government to conclude the collective agreement for Junior College lecturers.Three years have passed since the collective agreement had expire...

The NGO Repubblika has sent a letter to all of Malta’s MPs, appealing to them to vote in favour of an anti-mafia Bill proposed by the Nationalist Party, which is up for discussion in Parliament on Thursday.You have before you a Bill which seeks...

The government announced today that €12 million will be invested in a new facility at Ħal Far for small and medium-sized businesses.Addressing the media, Minister for the Economy and Industry Silvio Schembri said that the investme...

Education is the most important pillar on which our society and our economy are built, a statement by the Malta Chamber of SMEs read. The Malta Chamber of SMEs, in representation of a number of sectors directly dependent and affected by the Mini...

How is omicron different from previous variants?There are two key differences between omicron and previous variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in late 2019. Early data suggests that omicron cases are milder than infections caused ...

The world is facing the worst known climate emergency of humankind – with fears that our planet is approaching a point of no return. Facing such a challenge, the European Union has taken up leadership of the fight against climate change and res...

A severe weather front has hit Greece, with below-freezing temperatures and snowfall in many parts of the country, including the capital Athens and many Aegean islands.Authorities have warned the public to limit their movements outdoors to the essent...

In light of the Malta Film Week, a week full of events which strives to further appreciate the filming industry in Malta, Minister for Tourism and Consumer Protection Clayton Bartolo launched ‘Vision 2030,’ on Monday, a series of investme...

The first round of voting for Italy’s next president opens Monday without a clear slate of candidates following three-time ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s reluctant withdrawal, a situation that is likely to persist until Thursday.Italy&rsq...

An elderly man reported missing by police over the weekend has been found safe and sound.Police on Sunday appealed for information on the whereabouts of 76-year-old Joseph Grech.He was last seen near Mater Dei Hospital on Friday 21 January, but polic...

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany's 16 state governors will confer Monday to chart the country's way forward in the coronavirus pandemic, and are expected to prioritize the use of PCR tests for those most at risk as the omicron v...

The crisis in Ukraine is hardly going away — a showdown of two world views that could upend Europe. It carries echoes of the Cold War and resurrects an idea left over from the 1945 Yalta Conference: that the West should respect a Russian sphere...

As Malta approaches a point where 75% of the adult population will have received the Covid-19 booster, the health authorities are drawing up an exit roadmap to continue removing restrictions and to return towards normality, Deputy Prime Minister Chri...

The Naxxar Local Council never took an official position on a proposed development at the former trade fair grounds, despite saying that the embattled mayor’s position on the matter reflected its own position. Council meeting minutes show, in f...

Covid-19 has of course been the topic of the past two years, and a source of never-ending debate as the world navigates its way through different stages of the pandemic.But the next debate which is starting to shape up is whether Covid-19 should cont...

Seven Covid-19 patients have died while 273 new cases of the virus were reported by health authorities on Sunday.Authorities said that three men aged 86, 86, and 89 and four women aged 74, 81, 86, and 89 had died while positive for Covid-19.It is a r...

Malta’s Covid-19 measures will start to be relaxed from the first week of February as part of a plan which the government will announce in the coming days, Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Sunday.Speaking during a political event in Gozo, Ab...

Excuse the crude headline, but one has to say it as it is.Or as it will be, given that the negative impact of the law that Malta’s Parliament passed just before it rose for the Christmas recess will be known not today, but in the years to come....

The current increase in deaths of people who are positive for Covid-19 reflects the spike experienced in December and the death-to-positive case ratio remains unchanged, health sources have told The Malta Independent on Sunday. Over the past few days...

Public transport passenger numbers are still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels but a positive trend has been noted, information passed on by the Malta Public Transport shows.“Passenger numbers in 2021 amounted to 35.2 million, which is an increa...

The Nationalist Party is the underdog because it does not have millions in taxpayers money to “squander” like the PL is doing and because of the lack of an impartial national broadcaster, said Opposition Leader Bernard Grech in the PN&rsq...

Floriana are now just four poinst adrift of leaders Hibernians after winning a difficult match against Birkirkara in the last game of the fifteenth day of the BOV Premier League. After taking the lead in the first half and being superior to their opp...

Once Hakim Ziyech's curling, dipping strike landed in the Tottenham goal, Chelsea never looked back.Sure, it took until two minutes into the second half to break the deadlock and the Moroccan was justified in ranking it “10 out of 10." But the ...

AC Milan lost more ground on league leader Inter Milan and also lost another important player ahead of the derby as it drew 0-0 against Juventus at San Siro on Sunday.Key forward Zlatan Ibrahimović limped off in the 28th minute with an apparent ...

Prime Minister Robert Abela has made significant efforts to distance himself, the government and the Labour Party from its recent dirty past and from the Muscat era. But this is proving to be a very tall order, and his predecessor, as well as the sca...

BRUSSELS (AP) — Police fired water cannons and thick clouds of tear gas in Brussels on Sunday to disperse demonstrators protesting against COVID-19 vaccinations and restrictions that aim to curb the fast-spreading omicron variant.The protest dr...

The director general of the Civil Protection Department, Emanuel Psaila, is often seen in the thick of things when some accident takes place or a rescue operation is needed.But what is his favourite food? And does he like sport?He remembers his child...