AN EXCEL Airways flight destined for Manchester was grounded at Larnaca Airport on Sunday night after passengers suspected that two of the men on board were terrorists.
Flight XL 2143 had been due to take off from Larnaca Airport at 11.40pm on Sunday but instead the plane was grounded and the 228 British passengers were taken to a hotel in Nicosia for the night.
GREEK investigators into the Helios crash that killed 121 people were last night in Britain interviewing the British engineer who signed off the doomed Boeing 737 on August 14.
Chief investigator Akrivos Tsolakis and another Greek aviation expert travelled to London on Sunday to interview Alan Irwin and Malcom Fowler, a second engineer who had worked on the plane.
POLITICIANS yesterday called for a full investigation into the state of the National Guard following Saturday’s plane crash over Kolossi, which killed the two military pilots on board.
INVESTIGATIONS yesterday gathered pace into what caused a military plane to stray off course and crash into the village of Kolossi on Saturday.
HOUSE President Demetris Christofias yesterday launched a new attack on the UK during a gathering in London, only seven months after calling Britain the island’s “evil demon”.
The new attack comes as EU member states, under its current British presidency, attempt to thrash out a compromise response to Turkey’s declaration not to recognise the Republic of Cyprus.
FRANCE says it never intended to block the start of Turkey’s accession talks on October 3, but it would like the EU to rap Ankara’s unilateral declaration not to recognise Cyprus and to make sure the word “recognition” is included in the bloc’s response, French ambassador Hadelin de la Tour-du-Pin has said.
THE EDUCATION Ministry yesterday issued a warning to private tertiary-level colleges that it said had embarked on an intense advertising campaign to promote themselves as universities.
ALTHOUGH the general percentage of smokers in Cyprus has dropped from 29 per cent to 22 per cent since 1995, women smokers have increased from 11 per cent to 11.3 per cent.
POLITIS: “Discipline in ruins”. The crash of a National Guard plane at Kolossi on Sunday in which the pilot and co-pilot were killed raises serious questions about the issue of discipline in the army. This is the opinion not only of politicians but also of military sources, the paper said.
IT DID NOT take the media and the politicians very long to initiate the obligatory blame-game and rumour-mongering regarding the crash of the National Guard plane in Kolossi, in which two Guard officers were killed.
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.
