The police have managed to solve all murders committed in 2020, in a year where for the first time a father was charged with killing his son.
It is the second successive year where the police recorded a 100 per cent success rate, and the first time this has occurred since 2004, according to crime historian Eddie Attard.
Six cases were solved last year and three in 2019 – in other words, the police mounted prosecutions in all the murders that took place, although they are all still pending a court judgment.
Last year was not an extraordinary one for murders in terms of numbers: the six cases left seven victims, equal to the number of victims in 2018 and lower than the eight lives claimed in 2017.
It was a record-setting year for
Times of Malta, as Malta’s number one news site climbed into the world’s top 3,500 websites.
Those numbers were reflected in the attention given to individual articles, many of which were read by several tens of thousands of people.
Live blogs of major court sessions - think Joseph Muscat or Keith Schembri as witnesses - captivated audiences, as did our days-long coverage of COVID-19 developments and our rolling coverage of Robert Abela’s dominant victory in the Labour Party leadership race.
Elsewhere in politics Economy Minister Silvio Schembri’s shock “foreigners will go back to their countries” speech in parliament attracted huge interest, and readers also lapped up news that Adrian Delia had lost an important confidence vote within the PN.
From Covid to Cardinal -2020, the year in photos
Photos by Miguela Xuereb
Endings and beginnings. That is what we face in the last week of every year. This year, as a professional photographer I witnessed a multitude of challenges. Not only was it notable for the incredible impact which COVID-19 had on health, society and the economy, it was also a year which started with considerable political tumult.
January
The fire at Marsa open centre left hundreds of migrants waiting outside for hours including a few who needed medical assistance at the scene. Regrettably, the comments on FaceBook show a public largely desensitized to the plight of these unfortunates.
MaltaToday s most read stories for 2020
From the coronavirus pandemic to Keith Schembri’s court testimony, from the sudden death of a Naxxar teenager to a double murder in Sliema, these are the top stories for 2020, according to MaltaToday s readers
24 December 2020, 3:00pm
by Kurt Sansone
Keith Schembri s testimony, Miriam Pace s death in a house collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic were among the stories most read on MaltaToday
In a year dominated by the coronavirus pandemic it is no surprise that 13 of the top 20 most read stories on MaltaToday were COVID-19 related.
But even if COVID-19 was a constant in our lives throughout 2020, other news events did manage to gain readers’ attention.