THE GOVERNMENT’S chief EU negotiator George Vassiliou yesterday suggested the government should take DISY’s tax reform proposal as well as the one tabled by opposition parties into serious consideration with a view of sealing an agreement on the matter as soon as possible.

A MEETING this week among senior police officials decided to better the force’s crime-solving rate with a string of measures, including an intensified prevention campaign and increased use of DNA testing.

The chiefs of the district CID departments said that serious crime incidents had dropped this year, but added that the crime-solving rate needed to be improved.

PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides said yesterday that the necessary progress needed to make way for a solution to the Cyprus problem had not yet been achieved.

He was addressing a group of professors and students of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Athens who visited him at the Presidential Palace.

THE Cyprus Airways Group yesterday announced pre-tax profits of £4.0 million for 2001, compared to £5.6 million the previous year. After-tax profits clocked in at £2.3 million.

The group’s revenue, excluding its duty-free shops operation, rose £16.3 million from £162 million in 2000 to £178.3 million last year, an increase of 10.1 per cent.

LEGISLATION is being drafted which will remove the responsibility for offshore companies from the Central Bank, sources in the sector told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

A SPATE of animal poisoning and thefts in the Kato Polemidhia area in Limassol have placed local police authorities on alert, but so far information on the perpetrators or their motives is sketchy at best.

THE HOUSE European Affairs Committee yesterday vowed to adopt a £35 million proposal to combat water pollution caused by 800 industrial units.

“The pollution of surface, underground and sea water will have serious financial and practical consequences,” Committee chairman Tassos Papadopoulos of DIKO told reporters after a meeting on the matter yesterday.

CYPRUS has undertaken fully to harmonise its legislation on software piracy by January 1, 2003, the anti-piracy Business Software Alliance (BSA) said yesterday.

In a written announcement, BSA Cyprus said it had expressed its concerns over software piracy on the island to the Attorney-general’s office, which admitted that there was problem.

CYPRUS’ EU chief negotiator George Vassiliou yesterday assured cattle breeders and crop growers they would continue to receive subsidies at least till the island acceded to the bloc.

A FRENCH company has offered to explore the seas off Cyprus in an attempt to locate pockets of fresh water, which could be exploited to ease water shortages, the Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.