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Malta

Economy

Why More Countries Are Banning Foreigners From Buying Real Estate

Canada has become the most recent country to impose restrictions on non-residents buying real estate, arguing that wealthy investors from other countries are pricing out would-be local homeowners. But is singling out foreigners the best way to face a troubled housing market?

PARIS — It’s easy to forget that soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, many real estate experts were forecasting that housing prices could face a once-in-generation drop. The logic was that a shrinking pandemic economy would combine with people moving out of cities to push costs down in a lasting way.

Ultimately, in most places, the opposite has happened. Home prices in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand rose between 25% and 50% since the outbreak of COVID-19.

This explosion was driven by a number of factors, including low interest rates, supply chain issues in construction and shortages in available properties caused in part by investors buying up large swathes of housing stock.

Yet some see another culprit deserving of particular attention: foreign buyers.

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Brediterranean View

The Mediterranean island of Malta has kept many traces of its British past: Bedford buses (driving on the left side of the road), pubs, and these beautiful bow windows overlooking the beautiful port of Valletta.

Fresh Coat Of Paint

This man was giving his boat a fresh coat of paint on a hilly street in Valletta. Less than a year before, a U.S.-USSR summit in Malta is credited by some as having closed the Cold War. That meeting was aboard a much bigger Soviet boat anchored in the nearby harbor of Marsaxlokk.

Maltese Megaliths

The limestone temples on the island of Malta rank among the world's oldest religious sites. As with Stonehenge or the Ecuadorian Kalasaya, some of the site's prehistoric monoliths were astronomically aligned. I aligned this daytime shot with a perfectly blue sky.

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Superstitious Boats

The colorful Maltese fishing boats called luzzus are said to date back to Phoenician times. They're famous for the small pair of eyes drawn on their hulls — an ancient superstition supposed to ward off evil and bring protection to the fishermen.

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View From The Back

I bet this city worker wished his "office" faced the other way, so he could gaze upon the citadel of Victoria, on Gozo, Malta"s second-largest island.

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School's Out

Once a quiet fishing village in northeast Malta, Sliema became the island's first tourist resort. And with all the kids running around and playing on the promenade that day, it was easy to forget that Sliema means "peace" in Maltese.

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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Malta

Malta is one of the few Eurovision participants that have not missed a single contest since 1991. But despite such dedication, the country has always preferred finishing in the top 10 without winning — probably a way to make the most of the glory without the burden of organizing the party the following year. Classic.

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We Call It La Valette

The Mediterranean island of Malta has a past marked by Frenchmen. The capital of Valletta was named after Knight Hospitaller Jean Parisot de Valette, whose order then surrendered to Napoleon Bonaparte. But my visit there didn't make it into history books.

LA STAMPA
Niccolò Zancan

Mediterranean Graveyard, The Nameless Dead Of Malta

On this southern European island, some of the hundreds of corpses have arrived from the latest migrant tragedy. They will be processed and buried without knowing their identity. It is not the first time.

VALLETTA — They're stacked in silver tubes. One on top of another. They are sealed in black plastic bags with marker-scribbled signs hung at their feet: Unknown Number 7, Unknown Number 10. Here, we can count 24 nameless corpses, all unknown and unidentified.

"They are all adult males, except one teenager," says Dr. David Grima.

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Pious Bus

The English have long occupied Malta, hence the driving on the left with steering wheel on the right-hand side. But they haven't managed to import the Anglican religion: Catholicism is still deeply rooted in the island, as evidenced by the religious icons and Latin formula Verbum Dei caro factum est ("The Word of God was made flesh") in this old Bedford bus.

food / travel
Ludovic Bishoff

A Visit To Malta, A Hidden Gem Of History In The Mediterranean

VALETTA It is an inhospitable rock floating in the Mediterranean Sea. A piece of coralline limestone blown by the winds and burned by the sun with a layer of earth so thin that nothing much can grow on it.

Welcome to Malta, a simple and unpretentious place. Yet, this archipelago comprising eight islands – only two of which are populated – was disputed by every great civilization surrounding it for over 5,000 years. The firsts to lay foot on it were from nearby Sicilia. Then came the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines but also the Arabs and the Normans. They all came to get a piece of this poor land, whose strategic geographical position made it a crucial gateway in the Mediterranean.

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