A MAN who last year stabbed an 11-year-old boy to death on the pier of the old Limassol port was yesterday jailed for 14 years.

THE SLEW of property cases across the Green Line is posing a serious threat to relations between ordinary Greek and Turkish Cypriots, UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan said in his latest six-monthly report on Cyprus.

FOUR men, among them a police officer and two National Guard conscripts, have been detained by Limassol police on suspicion of forging a medical prescription used to obtain around 2,300 anabolic pills.

The case was reported to police by a pharmacist at the old Limassol hospital.

THE wife of a murdered contractor yesterday claimed her Pakistani lover had told her he was going to beat her husband, but she had told him not to do it.

The court listened attentively as 33-year-old Magda Eleftheriou read a prepared statement in which she admitted making mistakes but insisted she never wanted her husband to get hurt.

TRAVEL agents yesterday complained that the implementation of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) strategic plan to reposition Cyprus on the map was lagging behind and urged that it be speeded up.

THE GOVERNMENT yesterday denied that the US administration had filed a complaint about any negative treatment of US ambassador Michael Klosson during the visit of three American congressmen to the north, acting spokesman Marios Karoyan said yesterday.

UNOFFICIAL “brainstorming meetings” were held in Brussels on Monday and yesterday in a bid to achieve a breakthrough in the EU’s decision to end the economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriots.

THE government is preparing a new bill to assist people unable to pay old tax debts pending since 1999.

Aristos Chrysostomou, chairman of the House Finance Committee, said the new bill would provide special arrangements for people facing difficulties in paying old tax debts due to financial or health problems or other serious issues.

Outgoing High Commissioner laments ailing relations between north and south
THE DETERIORATION of relations between the two sides over the past year is endangering the way forward on Cyprus, British High Commissioner Lyn Parker said last night.

Parker who is leaving Cyprus shortly after four years on the job was addressing the Rotarians at the Nicosia Hilton.

OFFICIALS of the Cyprus Ophthalmological Society (COS) have criticised advertisements over a revolutionary laser eye surgery machine.

Speaking at a news conference yesterday, the Chairman of the COS, Dr Panicos Philipou, described the recent and very public statements of a local importer who brought over the new laser machine, as “very disturbing” and “untrue”.