BRITAIN yesterday woke up to the brutal realities of its role in the continued occupation of Iraq with the killing of six military policemen in its worst day of casualties since the war began on March 20 – let alone the ‘peace’.
LIMASSOL police were yesterday investigating the murder of a 53-year-old man, Kypros Andreou Paphitis, who was gunned down at point blank range as he was leaving his farm in Polemidhia. According to police, the assailants fired 12 rounds at Paphitis, six of which wounded him on various parts of his body. Paphitis managed to get out of his car and crawl for a few metres before dying.
MORE than 150 employees at the St. George Hotel in Paphos staged a walkout yesterday, in protest against an alleged violation of the worker-employer collective agreement by the hotel’s management. The strike, which involved 180 hotel employees, took place between 5.30am and 12 noon yesterday and was supported by employees’ unions SEK and PEO.
TRADE and Industry Minister George Lillikas yesterday confirmed that an investigation into the decision to upgrade the Larnaca refinery (CPR) had found that the management had withheld information from the board. The inquiry, however, decided that the information had not been withheld with intent to deceive, the minister added.
PRESSURE is mounting on Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, as the international community, opposition parties in the north and even Ankara appear to have ganged up to push for a solution before May next year.
PARLIAMENT is set to pass a bill imposing penalties for late payment to suppliers today. Retailers argue that the bill will force them to raise prices to meet their debts to suppliers, while smaller businesses will close down.
PETROL STATION operators yesterday announced they would be going on indefinite strike from tomorrow after talks over the renewal of a collective agreement with oil companies collapsed yesterday. Station operators demanded oil companies inject £20,000 a year for each station to cover operational costs, saying they were losing up to £22,000 a year running their petrol stations.
TWO MEN from Limassol are being held in police custody in Paphos in connection with the murder of a 65-year-old taxi driver last week. The victim, Michalis Zacharia, bled to death as a result of a stab wound to the throat. He was found dead on a construction site in Marathounda in the Paphos district.
THE GOVERNMENT only received three tenders for the construction and operation of five new marinas, it was revealed yesterday. Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister George Lillikas could not be reached for comment yesterday, but sources close to the marinas issue told the Cyprus Mail that the government could not have expected to find investors willing to go along with its terms.
CYPRUS is now on the last and hardest phase of harmonisation with the European Union and will have to mobilise all its forces to fulfil its obligations, the Co-ordinator for Cyprus’ Harmonisation with the EU, Takis Hadjidemetriou, warned yesterday.
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.
