CBS to step in after Miss Universe sacking

SACKED Miss Universe Pageant committee chairman Nicos Mastorakis of Athens will receive no more than £110,000 in compensation for his dismissal from the pageant, not £500,000 as reported on Tuesday, Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis said yesterday.

Rolandis said the US-based CBS Television network, co-sponsor of the event with New York real estate billionaire Donald Trump, would be assuming full responsibility for carrying the pageant off on May 13 following Mastorakis’ dismissal.

Rolandis said that, despite the sacking, CBS had told him it expected the Cyprus event, which is to be televised worldwide, to be "the most magnificent ever in the 49-year history of the pageant."

He also said he thought there would be a solution to the environmental objections raised to the government’s plan to light up the Rock of Aphrodite along the seacoast just east of Paphos, not only for the beauty pageant, but on a permanent basis.

"With some proper lighting of that rock, it would appear (at night) as if it were (hovering) somewhere in the air," he said. "It would be beautiful. We have ignored it for so many years, and people passing there at night can see nothing (of it) at all."

"It’s one of the beauty spots of Cyprus, and we should have done it years ago," Rolandis said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.