Valletta, Malta
Journalist murdered: Crusading Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed this week when a huge bomb turned her car into a smoking hulk. The investigative reporter, 53, and her blog Running Commentary had long been a thorn in the side of Malta’s elite. Using documents from the Panama Papers—a 2016 leak of more than 11 million documents from a Panama-based law firm accused of helping money launderers—she alleged that top Maltese officials, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, had received illicit payments from the government of Azerbaijan. The officials denied the allegations. “My mother was assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it,” said Caruana Galizia’s son, Matthew, also a journalist. Muscat called the murder “barbaric” and asked the FBI to help with the investigation.