Malta

When the 24-year-old Somali chemistry teacher saw the airplane overhead, he prayed that his nightmare journey was finally over.?? Already, he had made a grueling journey through the desert and then spent seven months in a crowded Libyan prison cell surrounded by sickness and death. Now, the rickety fishing boat carrying him and 167 other migrants was no match for the rough Mediterranean waters and he feared the current would pull it back to Libya.?? The airplane didn't come back, and it would be six more days before a Philippine freighter rescued the migrants and brought them to Malta, where he would spend 10 months in detention before being granted a form of temporary refugee status given to people fleeing war zones.

Talk about tests of faith. Douglas Kmiec is an influential Roman Catholic scholar, a veteran of Ronald Reagan's Justice Department and a Pepperdine University constitutional law professor. What he's gone through in the last handful of years, he sums up pretty well with the title of his latest book, "Lift Up Your Hearts: A true story of loving your enemies, tragically killing your friends, and the life that remains. " His interfaith work earned him President Obama's appointment as ambassador to Malta.

Brian Roney and his wife, Jenny, were on Malta, a tiny island nation in the Mediterranean Sea, in October celebrating their 25 th wedding anniversary. On the way to the Blue Grotto, the couple visited a small fishing village. "The translucent waters were so reflective of the colorful fishing boats, and I thought,'This looks like a Kodak moment,' " Roney said. The Castaic resident used a Nikon D40. View past photos we've featured . To upload your own, visit our reader travel photo gallery . When you upload your photo, tell us where it was taken and when.

Brian Roney and his wife, Jenny, were on Malta, a tiny island nation in the Mediterranean Sea, in October celebrating their 25 th wedding anniversary. On the way to the Blue Grotto, the couple visited a small fishing village. "The translucent waters were so reflective of the colorful fishing boats, and I thought,'This looks like a Kodak moment,' " Roney said. The Castaic resident used a Nikon D40. View past photos we've featured . To upload your own, visit our reader travel photo gallery . When you upload your photo, tell us where it was taken and when.

Following are some of the issues likely to be discussed by President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev when they meet on warships in Marsaxlokk Bay: EASTERN EUROPE: The political upheaval in the Soviet-led East Bloc as Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia move to lift the "Iron Curtain" and introduce democratic reforms.

How can anyone possibly write an article on Malta ("Malta, a Mediterranean Mecca," Jan. 9) without including the valor of those involved in fighting off Axis forces during World War II and saving this tiny (and highly strategic) island that was vital to victory in the Middle East. Malta holds the dubious distinction of being the most bombed and devastated area in history. PETER HUME Lake Forest

Your article by Stephanie Booth, "Gozo Is Slow ... Oh, So Slow" [May 2] was pleasant, but the author failed to mention one of the most impressive attractions: the ancient, stone Ggantija Temples (circa 3600 BC) near Xaghra, one of many fantastic archaeological sites found on Malta and Gozo. They are the main reason a friend and I spent a week exploring the islands in 1997. We noticed that the Maltese do have an uncanny knack for languages. The natives speak the two official languages, Maltese and English, and many also speak Italian.

The Egyptian Parliament passed a resolution Saturday approving the government's decision to storm a hijacked Egypt-Air jetliner in Malta--the bloodiest hijacking rescue operation in history. The Parliament passed the resolution during a special session Saturday night after the bodies of some of the hijacking victims were returned to Egypt from Malta. President Hosni Mubarak and other officials have accused Libya of masterminding the Nov. 23 hijacking.

Next month's summit at sea between President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will take place on U.S. and Soviet warships in waters off Malta, the White House announced today. The site designation was said by White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater to have been made "in accordance with an agreement with Maltese authorities." Original speculation about the summit site had centered on the waters off Italy, since Gorbachev will conclude a visit there on Dec. 1.

With a departure speech remarkable for its warmth and optimism, President Bush headed for Malta on Thursday, saying that his meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev represents "the beginning of a process as full of promise as any that we've known." He said he and Gorbachev "can work toward a level of European security, prosperity and peace as yet unknown in our lifetime."

Following approval by the tiny island of Malta, a crucial plan to beef up Europe's bailout fund for debt-strapped nations now lies in the hands of lawmakers in Slovakia, where the outcome remains up in the air. The Maltese parliament voted unanimously Monday in favor of the plan, which would increase the rescue fund's lending capacity to about $600 billion and enable it to buy government bonds and extend credit lines to distressed banks. European leaders hope the extra firepower will help contain the debt crisis that has rocked both the regional and global economy.

Sen. John McCain, who visited Libya with other Republican senators last week, said as the military mission there winds down the U.S. should consider helping the North African country cope with its “horrendous” casualties. The Arizona senator proposed sending some of the injured to the U.S. Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, or sending a U.S. hospital ship either to Libya, or, if that was too dangerous, to Malta, a European island nation south of Sicily. He said the revolution that toppled Moammar Kadafi had left 25,000 people dead, 3,000 maimed and 60,000 wounded.

Elements with the State Department are attempting to silence an American diplomat who believes he was personally charged by the White House with promoting President Obama's interfaith initiatives. The diplomat is the U.S. ambassador to Malta, Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine and former dean of the law school at Catholic University of America. He served in the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush and, as a devout Catholic, for many years has been prominent in the antiabortion movement and among those arguing for a larger role for faith-based efforts in public life.

In a dramatic rescue, a pair of British military planes plucked about 150 oil workers and others from the desert in eastern Libya and flew them out of the violence-torn country, officials here said Saturday. The two C-130 Hercules aircraft landed in the desert south of Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, said Liam Fox, Britain's defense secretary. Waiting on the ground were workers and their dependents, including British and other foreign nationals, who were bundled aboard and taken to safety on the island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean.

Jackie Nink Pflug was shot in the head at point-blank range, rolled down a set of metal stairs and left for dead on an airport tarmac in Malta in November 1985. The man wielding the gun was one of five Palestinian militants who had hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648 bound from Athens to Cairo, where Pflug was a psychologist and special education teacher at a school for international students. By training and by nature, Pflug had always been a problem solver, quick to come up with a solution to a child's reading problem or a classroom dilemma.

When the 24-year-old Somali chemistry teacher saw the airplane overhead, he prayed that his nightmare journey was finally over.?? Already, he had made a grueling journey through the desert and then spent seven months in a crowded Libyan prison cell surrounded by sickness and death. Now, the rickety fishing boat carrying him and 167 other migrants was no match for the rough Mediterranean waters and he feared the current would pull it back to Libya.?? The airplane didn't come back, and it would be six more days before a Philippine freighter rescued the migrants and brought them to Malta, where he would spend 10 months in detention before being granted a form of temporary refugee status given to people fleeing war zones.

The Mediterranean island of Malta will be the base of next month's informal summit at sea between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, U.S. and Soviet officials said Wednesday as they scrambled to arrange a superpower session not quite like any other. Planning at the White House for the Dec.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, they meet in Mario's, a London trattoria, on a warm evening in 1951. "You don't seem very pleased to see me," observes one, tilting his cocktail. "The last time I saw you, you tried to kill me," explains the other. So begins Mark Mills' "The Information Officer," a novel so triumphantly old-fashioned, so double-upholstered with the stuff of classics, it reads like the story of "Casablanca" revisited, like a vanished Graham Greene.

The freighter Arctic Sea seemed to have vanished in the Atlantic Ocean's vastness, but officials said they knew where it was all along and kept quiet to bring a hijacking to a bloodless end. A Russian naval vessel reached the Arctic Sea late Sunday near Cape Verde, thousands of miles from the Algerian port where it was to have docked Aug. 4. Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said Tuesday that eight suspected hijackers were in custody....