The Times reports a PQ about emissions by vehicles. 12,529 reports were made to a dedicated number and of these only 21 failed the emissions test. Someone, somewhere, is doing something wrong. Only this week cities in Europe suffered huge hikes in pollution levels due to the anomalous weather...

The new Lidl branch threw open its doors in Xewkija this weekend. The Gozitans turned up en masse – particularly after the “leak” that the first 100 customers would be able to buy a 399€ TV at the discounted price of 100€. I heard reports of traffic jams as well as...

Listening to French radio this morning (it could have been any radio really) I heard about the gigantic efforts deployed by China in order to locate the lost Malaysian airlines plane. At one point the Chinese PM was reported as saying how important it was for China to find the lost plane...

The World Wide Web turns 25 today. As Sir Tim Berners Lee makes a move to try to keep the “web we want”, the current state of affairs is such that the social media revolution is still the main motor behind the spread of the web worldwide. The availability of immediate information...

“Quand j’entends, par exemple, madame Taubira dire qu’elle n’est pas au courant (du fond du dossier), elle nous prend pour des blaireaux. – Gilbert Collard. One hot issue in French politics right now is that of Sarkozy’s tapped phone. It turns out that...

The upcoming French municipal elections have unearthed a huge problem. In many municipalities there is a dearth of candidates, particularly for the post of Mayor. In the Gironde area 45% of the smaller communes are still without a candidate – and it does not stop there. The main reason...

Back in 1992, Vaclav Havel was the President of a reborn Czechoslovakia. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Iron Curtain was still fresh in recent memory and Havel’s new republic was making its way towards the ideal of “Western Democracy”. Fukuyama might be...

The works of a psychopath in Mosta (whether direct or through a hired hand) have tickled the curiosity of the Maltese public. It does not take much for anything to get onto the media these days (as I discovered to my chagrin thanks to a what I thought would be an innocuous Eurovisionjoke...

The Russians had an interesting expression while under the communist rule. They would say that even the past is unpredictable – because it kept getting rewritten in order to better fit the needs of whoever was in power at some particular moment. I was reminded of this when I read about...

In an article entitled “Sharing explicit selfies without consent may be made illegal“, the Times reports that Social Dialogue Minister Helena Dalli has reacted to the current furore on selfies. Minister Dalli is quoted as saying that “the sharing of explicit material without...

Valérie Trierweiler has been hospitalised following revelations in the press that her companion – French President François Hollande – had been having an affair with actress Julie Gayet. This latest sex scandal in France involves an actress who had taken part in a promo video...

Joseph Muscat has reiterated his wish that Malta becomes a ‘leader’ in Europe. Muscat’s record of bravado and not too cleverly disguised machismo might still have some appeal with the sheep in his fold but the contradictions and cracks in the ably constructed mask  do not...