Times Talk by Times of Malta

Former Chamber President Marisa Xuereb said most people can only produce top quality work for five hours a day

A five-hour work day is sufficient for most employees to produce high-quality work in today’s technology-driven economy, according to former Chamber president Marisa Xuereb.

Speaking on Times Talk, the long-time entrepreneur and employer said most people including herself can only produce top quality work for five hours a day, and if they worked for 25 hours a week (five hours a day for five days) they would likely produce around the same amount of work they do when they work eight hours daily.

Adrian Delia and Jonathan Attard clashed in their first face-to-face debate since the conclusion of international arbitration between Malta and Steward Health Care, during a Times Talk episode filmed on Wednesday.

Throughout the fiery debate, the pair butted heads over who emerged on top in the arbitration proceedings, whether the government could have pursued a different legal route, and what the tribunal actually said about a €400 million sum supposedly stolen by Steward.

Armed with a stack of meticulously annotated documents in hand, almost certainly the various court sentences, reports and rulings handed down throughout this multi-year saga, neither Attard nor Delia held back once the cameras were rolling.

Attard was speaking as justice minister while former opposition leader Delia waged a lengthy legal campaign that ended with a court annulling all contracts awarded to Steward and its predecessor Vitals Global Healthcare.

When Karl Schembri was a boy, his father carried a dark and unspoken history – years of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.

The trauma left deep scars, and as an adult, his father’s mind began to unravel. The voices that haunted him eventually drove him to commit an unthinkable act: the murder of Schembri’s mother.

Schembri, an author, journalist and activist, has now finally broken a decades-long silence through his new novel Eħlisna mid-Deni (Deliver us from Evil).

He tells Times Talk the book - a work of fiction inspired by his real story - is his way of achieving justice for a human tragedy that the authorities systematically overlooked for years.

Days after announcing major tax cuts for parents, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana tells Mark Laurence Zammit he is not happy with people who are upset that families are to get some extra help.

In a one-hour interview about Budget 2026 measures, Caruana also speaks frankly about mass public transport, worker productivity and the end of cash-for-passports income.

Traffic has become the single biggest problem with living in Malta. Transport Malta's traffic team is responsible for ensuring it flows smoothly.

We joined the team on a Monday morning as they monitored traffic flows, cleared roads and responded to crashes.

Michael Stivala is one the country's biggest developers and president of the Malta Development Association (MDA). Wayne Flask is a long-time environmental activist and secretary general of the NGO Il-Kollettiv.

The two agree on almost nothing when it comes to construction and development - which is why this week they went head to head in this Times Talk debate on the highly controversial planning reform.

A woman was convinced she was chatting on Facebook with Pope Leo XIV and was sending him money for his projects – and she simply did not believe Bank of Valletta when it told her the ‘pope’ was a scammer.

Another man lost his life savings to a fictitious Canadian woman whom he chatted with for months, and after she took all his money, he went to look for her abroad, only to discover the address she gave him didn’t exist.

And another woman spent seven years and €170,000 trying to buy a dog that never even existed.

These are not plot lines from a film but real-life stories of Maltese people who have lost a lot of money to sophisticated online scams during the past months. Their stories are detailed in this episode of Times Talk.

The episode delves into a wave of increasingly sophisticated and insidious online scams that is sweeping across Europe, leaving a trail of financial and emotional devastation.

Alex Borg won a nail-biter of a leadership race a week ago. Now, as Malta's new Opposition leader, he must lead the PN out of the political doldrums and make it electable once again.

In this Times Talk interview, the PN's new leader speaks about the party's future and finances, his relationship with leadership rival Adrian Delia and perceptions that he is close to big business.

As Times of Malta celebrates its 90th year, we speak to editor-in-chief Herman Grech and deputy online editor Chris Scicluna about 50 years of history and news in Malta.

Grech has overseen the Times' shift from a primarily print-based newspaper to an online one. Scicluna joined the Times of Malta newsroom 45 years ago, following in his father's footsteps.

Together, the two recall some of the most significant events in Malta's modern history in his interview with Mark Laurence Zammit

Planning Minister Clint Camilleri found himself in the eye of a storm right in the middle of July this year - and it was a storm of his own doing.

Proposals to reform planning laws caught people off guard and led to howls of outrage, as activists noted they would effectively give the Planning Authority unfettered power.

Now, Camilleri says the critics are right.

In this exclusive interview, the minister vows to revoke many of the proposals' most controversial clauses, while arguing others parts of the reform are necessary.

"Despite our good intentions, the activists and NGOs are right," he says.