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Balancing Old and Modern Remains Difficult for Even a Wealthy Place like Malta

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It is always a downer to come back from a street party to find your house flooded. But in Malta, that downer is all the more when the stone house is likely more than a century old, and the party may involve half the country's population gathering around to watch a one-and-a-half-hour fireworks display. In positive terms, it is called "tradition and modernity living side by side." In less pleasant words, it can be summed up as "why does the government spend money on free fireworks, when it may want to consider subsidizing housing repairs with that money instead?"
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China is about to dominate the supply chain for non-energy alternatives to oil and gas

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Electric vehicle purchases, solar panel installations, windmills going up...as the Third Persian Gulf War degenerates into a tit-for-tat blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, increased use of renewable energy seems to be a panacea. That is, until you dig a little deeper and realize that the oil and natural gas stuck behind the Strait are not just for energy use. Petroleum is the raw material for everything from the fertilizers to feed our crops to the helium that is indispensable to manufacturing semiconductors. Electricity can transport us, but cannot put food and information technology on our tables.
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Peter Magyar will need to calibrate how much he leads Hungary away from Chinese investments

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Western liberals rejoiced when Victor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary for the last decade and a half, was finally thrown out of office recently, despite persistently tilting the field to his favor through monopolizing mainstream media and gerrymandering electoral districts to dilute opposition votes. Peter Magyar, the incoming prime minister, immediately called for a complete overhaul of the state broadcaster and rescinding Hungary's opposition to the EU's further funding of Ukrainian war efforts. Brussels seemed to have lost an enemy and gained an ally.
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